Estimation in Agile projects can be tricky sometimes, especially for teams and organizations that are moving into Agile from non-Agile frameworks I use these slides, along with a small activity to train teams on estimation in Agile

1. AGILE ESTIMATION
Deepak T Gururaja

2. WHAT IS ESTIMATION?
 a rough calculation of the value, number, quantity, or extent of
something.
 a judgment of the worth or character of someone or something

3. USAGE OVER TIME OF THE
WORD

4. BEFORE WE START
 Let us then do an exercise

5. A SMALL EXERCISE
 Can you arrange these planets in order of their size?
• Mercury
• Venus
• Earth
• Mars
• Jupiter
• Saturn
• Uranus
• Neptune
• Pluto

6. HOW WERE YOU ABLE TO
ARRANGE?
 Did you know their masses?
 Did you know their diameters?
 Did you know the history of these planets?
 How then, were you able to arrange accurately?

7. WHY ESTIMATE?
 Imagine you are getting a house built
 You contact a contractor
 You explain to him the how you want your new house to look like
 You answer any queries that he has
 Then, you ask for an __________

8. CONE OF UNCERTAINTY

9. GOOD ESTIMATES
 Can we have something called a good estimate?
 How much can we trust our estimates?
 Are estimates for real or just lies?
 Are we giving estimates just because our SM will not agree if we
don’t?
 Lets look at a small video

10. ESTIMATES AND
EMPIRICAL PROCESS
 The further into the project you go, the lesser the uncertainties
 So, why estimate early?
 Estimates are a means to trigger conversations
 They bring out the wrong assumptions and wrong understandings

11. ESTIMATES ARE….
 Estimates
 Not real
 Approximations
 Guesstimates
 Provided only to get the project rolling

12. ESTIMATES
 Estimation of Epics
 Estimation of User Stories
 Estimation of Tasks

13. ESTIMATION OF EPICS
 Very high level
 Large variance is expected
 Is only a bucketing mechanism
 Helps to differentiate some large epics v/s small epics
 Helps to determine what needs to be considered now and what needs
to be considered later
 Typical metrics used – T Shirt sizing

14. ESTIMATING USER STORIES
 Little more detailed
 More number of buckets
 Clearer end goal
 Lesser variance expected
 Lesser uncertainty
 Typical metrics – Story point sizing

15. TASK ESTIMATE
 Detailed
 Much lesser variance
 More certainty
 Done at an individual task level where information is already known
 Mostly done at a day level
 Recommended metric – Hours or ideal days

16. HOW TO ESTIMATE

17. HOW TO ESTIMATE
 The exact number of candies in this jar can not be determined by
looking at it, because most of the candies are not visible. The amount
can be estimated by presuming that the portion of the jar that cannot
be seen contains an amount equivalent to the amount contained in the
same volume for the portion that can be seen.