Questions tagged [estimation]

For questions about the estimation of the project's parameters, such as time or cost.

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2 votes
5 answers
204 views

How do you estimate the benefit of adding a software feature?

My previous estimates have generally been carried out by making a guess at what % increase a feature will have on conversion rates, or sales etc. However it's not scientific / evidence-based at all. ...
13 votes
8 answers
7k views

Developer keeps underestimating tasks time

This is one of my first projects in charge, and I am leading a team of 2 dev, a senior and a mid-level one. The mid-level developer is underestimating his time on most tasks. He is telling me that ...
9 votes
9 answers
3k views

At whose expense is the stage of preparing a contract performed?

Let's suppose a customer needs a software product and comes to a software development vendor. The customer describes the product and maybe even provides business requirements documentation (BRD). Then ...
2 votes
2 answers
753 views

How to estimate sprint velocity when there is a change in story points in scrum

Initially, the Product Backlog contained 350 story points of PBIs. After completing 7 sprints of development, the Product Backlog contains 140 story points of PBIs . The average velocity is 30 per ...
4 votes
2 answers
188 views

Planning Poker Reluctance

I am joining a new team that has been struggling with sizing for years. They have not been making sprints. They have been setting their own Story Points, and historically they have correlated them to ...
9 votes
4 answers
3k views

Does the scrum master also estimate user stories?

We recently started working with scrum on an new (large) project. I am a developer but do not take part in that project other than my role as scrum master. I know about the software they use, but don'...
6 votes
3 answers
1k views

Has anyone actually tried "The Bermuda plan" and if so, how did it go?

The Wikipedia page on Brook's Law includes the following sentence: The Bermuda plan, where most developers on a project are removed ("sent to Bermuda") and the remaining are left to ...
0 votes
1 answer
134 views

How to estimate amount of work/man hours for an unfamiliar task? This project is fixed bid project from customer

How to estimate amount of work/man hours for an unfamiliar task? This project is fixed bid project from customer. And most of our project is fixed bid project, for the past 3 - 4 project we are ...
8 votes
4 answers
3k views

How can you estimate a spike story?

We are working on a technology of which the team is not sure how would it go. I would like to estimate and timebox this story. However, the scrum team has to have goal or a shippable product at the ...
2 votes
3 answers
376 views

Task estimation and probable risks

Let's suppose we are estimating a task (not by the planning poker). We have discovered that there are a few possible problems (risks): Risk 1 - with the probability p1, ..., risk N - with the ...
11 votes
4 answers
2k views

Agile/scrum - tracking time spent in current iteration towards stories from the next iteration if all current stories are done

Our team has been slowly trying to go towards agile, and like many other teams, up to this point, the question of "what do we do when we actually finish all commitments?" is fairly new and foreign to ...
5 votes
1 answer
2k views

Agile. Release planning. Why do I need stories instead of themes/epics

I'm reading Mike Cohn's book about Agile estimation. At the same time I have a release planning in couple of days. It's going to be 6 months (12 sprints release). We have the ideas about what needs ...
2 votes
1 answer
5k views

How do you estimate epics?

Let's say we have a brand new project and we want to raughly come up with a bunch of releases and its dates to give the business a vague idea of when we will finish. Obviously we have all our user ...
12 votes
7 answers
2k views

In scrum, how do you track/estimate points when multiple tickets overlap their work?

I've never been fully able to answer this question, and from a lot of searching I haven't been able to get the right keywords to find anyone who's asked this question in the way I mean it. Say that ...
0 votes
1 answer
183 views

How to better use Story Points in our teams?

I have several development teams that moved from hours to Story points 6 months ago. Since then, we have experienced several issues with using Story Points, and I hope you can help me and us: When ...
19 votes
5 answers
19k views

How can developers and testers agree on story point estimates?

Previously we used duration for each story, but in our current sprint we are using story points (effort) keeping test team effort separate from the development team effort. Story points are based on ...
7 votes
7 answers
14k views

Should there be testing-only user stories?

We estimate stories as 1, 2, 4, 6, or 8 points. Consider a story with less development work but huge testing effort. Let's say we estimate that story as 8 points. We see the following options: Let ...
5 votes
7 answers
1k views

How reliable is velocity?

I'd actually like to devide the question in the title in two related sub questions: In your experience, how reliable is the velocity in letting the product owners forecast the delivery date of a ...
13 votes
5 answers
3k views

when a software project is behind schedule should we add manpower?

When an essential software project is behind schedule we might naturally add manpower. The new developer, however competent and however quickly recruited, needs additional training from an ...
8 votes
7 answers
4k views

Estimating when my project will be done

Suppose my project has 150 story points of work remaining to be done. Over the last 10 iterations the team has achieved the following velocities of 16, 12, 13, 5, 14, 7, 6, 12, 16, and 14. Assume two-...
6 votes
5 answers
955 views

We have a velocity of zero

I am a Scrum Master for a small development team of 7 developers and 3 testers with 2 week sprints. The product we are working on is large with a lot of modules. The breakdown of the modules is ...
102 votes
10 answers
41k views

How to estimate amount of work/man hours for an unfamiliar task?

Sooner or later we come across a task in our project, with which we are totally unfamiliar ('we' as in PM, but also possibly the staff assigned to do this particular task). How can we estimate ...
7 votes
5 answers
5k views

How to manage story points when several developers work on 1 story?

My team consists of 2 backend devs, 1 front end dev and designer. Lets pretend we have next user story: As a user I want to sign-in/sign-out to use the system Designer says that it is equal to 2 ...
1 vote
2 answers
4k views

How to Calculate Effort Variance in Scrum

My team currently works in 3 week sprints and we are capturing Key Performance Indicator (KPI) for each sprint. One of the KPIs is Effort Variance (EV) per sprint My question is at the end of the ...
3 votes
2 answers
174 views

What’s the name for the estimation method where only one team member estimates at a time and others have a veto right?

This method is usually used for estimating quickly on a large chunk of user stories to get a feeling on the overall project effort or part of it. I know this estimation method has a name but I have ...
2 votes
2 answers
221 views

How to estimate and plan with a distributed, part-time team?

The situation: We are a small, fully-distributed software solutions provider. We serve multiple clients, and given our size that means every team member is on multiple, part-time billable teams. ...
35 votes
7 answers
16k views

Is Planning Poker Bad for Software Development Teams?

We have a project manager that is adamant about planning poker. I have found that this adds stress to everyone on the team, and the times are always wrong. We have different skill levels on the team ...
0 votes
3 answers
269 views

How to estimate delivery date with unidentified tasks

Given a software project which is complete when all of its deliverables are delivered, in which each deliverable has sub-deliverables, in which each sub-deliverable has multiple tasks assigned to it ...
0 votes
3 answers
2k views

When estimating with story points should developers and QA provide their estimate based on their individual idea of complexity?

The question was as follows (and from the QA member of the team): Should I think about how complex it is from a QA AND a developer's perspective? Or just from a QA's perspective? Since story points ...
1 vote
2 answers
161 views

How should I handle project cost (in time) to a client without committing too much work?

currently we have a client that have a series of requirements (very broad and general) for an app. I as the PM was asked by my boss to estimate how much hours of work were required to make that app. ...
0 votes
2 answers
236 views

Slowing down of an agile team as the development progresses

Let's consider an agile software project. In the beginning of a project each Story can be implemented quite quickly because the code base is small, there're few dependecies between different parts ...
7 votes
2 answers
539 views

Any research of the accuracy of Story Points?

One of the main questions about Story Points is what is their accuracy. Has any research or survey been performed to analyse their precision? For example what is the accuracy of the completion date ...
5 votes
5 answers
4k views

Definition of a Story Point [closed]

As far as I'm aware there's no definition of Story Points and how to compare them. Each person in a team may have his personal understanding of the correlation between an effort and Story Points. Isn'...
15 votes
3 answers
1k views

How to use Story Points, if User Stories are completely different?

Story Points (SP) is a good measurement, that allows estimating User Stories. SP (in my understanding, it's an important note) is convenient because it is relative and not related with time. All ...
0 votes
1 answer
265 views

Kanban Estimation using Littles Law

I am new to Kanban, I am aware that Kanban is a flow system and estimation is optional. My stakeholders have requested the following: Provide a delivery date for the remaining items (WIP)? If the ...
2 votes
1 answer
265 views

How can I calculate how many developers do I need and how long it takes to complete the project? [closed]

I am trying to create an LMS system using Angular and NativeScript. It's a LMS web application like Adobe connect (although a simplified version) that will be written in Angular 8 for example, and a ...
2 votes
4 answers
2k views

How do you measure time units in sprint velocity?

I am trying to get my head around "Story points" using the Scrum methodology. As a starting point, I have been following the following article: http://scrummethodology.com/scrum-effort-estimation-and-...
0 votes
1 answer
161 views

Mobile apps: integrate backend work in velocity?

Here is my situation: I work with two SCRUM teams, iOS and Android Each of the SCRUM team has its own Product and Sprint backlogs We have shared Sprint Plannings, Reviews and Retrospectives (both ...
6 votes
5 answers
15k views

How to estimate accurate velocity when team members are on leave

I am a Scrum Master of a team with 12 members. I know that the size of the team is large at this point, but as we grow further we will divide the team into multiple Scrum Teams. Our estimations for ...
1 vote
1 answer
110 views

Outsourcing company: Usage of velocity for offers

Currently I am working in an outsourcing company and our management has decided to use the following scheme for "Velocity of the developers": Each developer has a velocity quotient: Senior Developer:...
17 votes
4 answers
6k views

Should velocity increase with time?

Some scrum masters are concerned with "bumping up" a team's velocity during a sprint, as if a higher velocity is better. But points are a relative measure of the work that a team needs to do for ...
1 vote
6 answers
2k views

Velocity of the team

If i have been provided with the information of six sprints having story points like 20,21,22,23,24,25,26 then what should be the velocity of the team ?
1 vote
4 answers
249 views

Team added "Daily Scrum" as a task in Jira. How do I get rid of this?

So I am just joining a new team. This team is using "Daily Scrum" as a task because according to them it is a "task". Obviously I want to help them understand that it is not a task, just like ...
0 votes
2 answers
115 views

When should we stop estimating?

When using Scrum, are the estimated story points for completing an User Story sufficient, or should the estimate be taken at the task level?
2 votes
2 answers
2k views

What is an "e zero" estimate

I am often asked to provide an "e zero" estimate for a piece of work. I have been assuming up to now that it means "rough estimate". Does anyone have any link to what this means specifically. I ...
0 votes
2 answers
367 views

Fibonacci scale project estimates: how is it not vulnerable to misunderstanding by management?

The Fibonacci sequence is to assist developers with project estimates. The concern is that we consistently see management use the points derived from Fibonacci sequence estimates to determine project ...
1 vote
3 answers
90 views

Tracking progress of a team working on small tasks

Our software team works on small tasks. Each task takes about 2 weeks. There are developers whose performance is twice bigger than the other's (the level is the same). Everybody just writes how much ...
0 votes
2 answers
90 views

Tasks during sprint planning

For the next sprint, Jira displays the total number of story points in the backlog, calling it "Estimate.". This number leaves out tasks, which are estimated in hours, not story points. This makes it ...
5 votes
3 answers
737 views

Dev went on vacation leaving his work unfinished. How to manage this without informing the customer?

I would like to discuss and hear some advice from you about a pretty common situation. We develop the functionality that has huge business value for the customer’s project and thus the customer is ...
0 votes
1 answer
139 views

How are low ambiguity and low complexity tickets dealt with when they have a high work cost?

In our scrum team, we can often get user stories which are not very complex and not ambiguous but have a high amount of leg work associated. Example: We receive a user story to replace the name of a ...

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