Agile Estimation

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Using ‘Spikes’ in Agile Software Development

‘Spikes’ are time boxed periods of research and development used in Agile Software Development environments to research a concept and/or create a simple prototype.

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Sprint Planning: Hours or Story Points (?) – that is the question!

There is a lot of debate about whether to estimate sprint requirements in hours or to leave them in Story Points. Personally, I see pros and cons of both approaches but would use Story Points over hours where/whenever possible.

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Agile Estimation and the Cone of Uncertainty

The Cone of Uncertainty is a Project Management term used to describe the level of uncertainty existing at different stages of a project.

In short, we become more certain of our estimates as we learn more about what we’re estimating.

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Value Points – Estimating the relative value of a User Story

Value Points can be used to measure the relative value of stories using a Fibonnaci Sequence. Although not appropriate or particularly necessary in all cases e.g. primarily when you have an omni-present Product Manager, these can be a useful way to prioritise and convey relative importance to a team. This approach becomes increasingly useful as teams scale to cover multiple projects combined with Business As Usual activities.

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Using Velocity to measure the Productivity of an Agile Development Team

Although you can not use Velocity to measure the productivity of one team compared to another, you can use velocity to help track the relative productivity of the same team from one sprint to another assuming the value of a point stays the same over time.

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Software Estimation – the more precise you are, the less accurate you will be!

We often confuse ‘accurate’ (mean difference) with ‘precise (variance)’. It would be accurate to say that I was less than six foot tall, it would be precise to say that I was…

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Velocity can be used to measure the output of any team…

var dzone_style=”2″;Velocity is a measure of how much work a team can complete in a set period of time.  It is measured in Story Points and although it was originally created for use in Software Development scenarios, it can be used in just about every type of team scenario. Velocity can be measured assuming you have… : 1 [...]

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What’s my team velocity?

I often get asked how an existing team would go about determining their Velocity (the average amount of work a team can complete in a set period of time), so I thought I’d write a post about how we’ve done it in the past…

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