This presentation covers basic details of agile estimation, it also elaborate how the sizing is done using story points and ideal days. This presentation also discuss the difference between ideal days and story point based estimation approach.

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iZenBridge
Agile Estimation
Saket Bansal , PMP® , PMI-ACP®
iZenBridge Consultancy Private Limited

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Agenda
1
• Agile Estimation
2
• Story Points / Ideal Days
3
• Doing Estimation

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What Is Estimation?
• Estimation is a prediction of how
long a project will take or how
much it will cost
• Approximate judgment-Oxford
English Dictionary
• A prediction that is most likely to
be true

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Estimation AccuracyUncertaintyinEstimation
Time in Project

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Estimation Process
How long / How
much?
Calendar
Days &
Money
How long for an
item ? For one
person ?
Effort
Can we
measure the
software size?
Size
•Use Case
Points
•Function
Points
•Story
Points
•Ideal Days

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Traditional Estimation
Size Productivity Effort
Project
Dependencies
Duration

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Agile Estimation
Size Calculation Duration
400 Story
Points
20 Velocity
20
Iterations

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Planning Onion
Strategy
Portfolio
Product
Release
Iteration
Day
Estimation
Release Level
Iteration Level Estimation

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Two Levels of Planning
Release / Project (3 to 12 Months)
Estimation for long term plan: High Level
Estimation for given iteration: Detailed in Hours
Iteration 2 to 4 Weeks
Rolling
Wave

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Estimation at two Levels
# PBI Description Size
1 As a Job Seeker I
can create multiple
profile
3
2 2
3 3
8
13
20
# SPI Description Hrs
1 Determine rules about
who can create multiple
profile.
1
2 Specify acceptance tests
to show how this should
work.
2
3 Design user interface. 1
4 Code user interface. 5
5 Add tables and stored
procedures to database.
6 Automate tests. 4

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Agenda
1
• Agile Estimation
2
• Story Points / Ideal Days
3
• Doing Estimation

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It's about Relative ranking

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Story Point
• The “bigness” of a task
• Influenced by
• How hard it is / Complexity
• How much of it there is / Volume of Work
• Risk / Uncertainty
• Points are unit-less
• We can use math

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Ideal Days…
• How long something would take if
• It’s all you worked on
• You had no interruptions
• And everything you need is available
• The elapsed time is much longer (Why?)

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Ideal Days / Story Points
Story Points Ideal Days
Are typically faster, since we are
doing relative ranking
My ideal days cannot be added to
your ideal days, so it takes time to
estimate
Help drive cross-functional behavior While estimating in ideal days
sometime team start thinking in their
functional boundaries
Difficult to estimate first few stories Ideal days are easier to estimate at
first
Pure measure of size, sometime
difficult to explain outside team
Ideal days are easier to explain
outside the team
Do not decay Start decaying with time
Measurement of size so does not give
direct indicator for efficiency
Force companies to confront time
wasting activities

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forum.iZenBridge.com

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Agenda
1
• Agile Estimation
2
• Story Points / Ideal Days
3
• Doing Estimation

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Doing Estimation
• The Estimation scale should be non
linear
• Frequently used estimation scales
• 1, 2, 3, 5, and 8 , 13
• 1, 2, 4, and 8
• We estimate better within one order of
magnitude
• Epics can have range like 20,40 and
100

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Estimators with deck of cards
PO Clarifies the story
Each Estimator selects a card
Cards are turned over
Discuss Differences
Agreement Write the estimate
No
Yes
Planning Poker

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