Presented on Agile-Lean Ireland meetup in Dublin. Are estimates good practice in software development? How about replacing them with metrics and use data for project delivery?

1. Data Driven
planning in Kanban
Arkadiusz Felinczak
ALI - Lightning Talk Smackdown!

2. Planning – why not estimates?
• Estimates are opinions.
• Hofstadter’s law.
• Parkinson’s law.
• Anchoring effect.
• Estimate = commitment.

3. Lean approach - measure
 Measure CT and throughput.
 Don’t mix different work types.
 Break the work into similar size items.
 Visualize and control your metrics.
 Improve.

4. Cycle Time and WIP
 Measure your team Cycle Time.
 Make sure that WIP is constant (Little's law).
 Provide transparency on metrics to team and stakeholders.
 Use numbers for communication.

5. Introduce Work Item types
 What are typical types of work team
does ?
 Diffrent size, complexity, treatment,
required skills, process, ...
 Measure values and set Service
Level Expectation.
Source: https://www.engage3.com/dynamic-solutions/

6. Don’t focus on average CT
 Most teams starts with average Cycle Time.
 What is average of 5 and 20 ? Is it useful ?
 Use 85th Percentile for SLE.
 Use control charts to visualize metric.

7. Ageing – leading indicator
 Put dot on a card during
standup (or SOS).
 Mark dots red if card
seems to take long.
 Discuss during standup
and swarm if needed.

8. Cycle Time Control chart
Metric should be stable to replace estimates!

9. Summary
 Stable metrics can replace estimations.
 They are easy to collect.
 It is harder to argue with numbers.
 No negative impact on productivity.
 Transparent metrics reduce need for status reports.

10. Thank you