Is it because
estimates are lies and estimation waste ?
-hey: wait a minute! I have seen value in the estimation process. This post shows the difference.
The first thing to figure out is: Why do we estimate in our team? Is it due to lack of trust, and the urge to micro manage and illusion of control, not focusing on value? in that case, maybe solving the underlying issues should be the number one priority :) just tossing away estimation will not solve any of these more severe issues.
On the other side; estimations might be for the internal use in the team. An estimate is a solid number, it is something that all team members can relate to, and figure out if the team has roughly the same understanding of
- the problem
- and solution,
- what is out of scope,
- what is needed,
- what is nice to have,
- what is over-engineering,
- what are the risks involved,
- what dependencies do we have,
- what test coverage and state is in this part of the code,
- how familiar are the team members with the code, domain and goal.
And: Only a limited number of software development challenges has a fixed scope. To discuss in the team what is the smart thing to do is a positive effect of valuable estimation.
The impartant question is this: Does estimation give you true value? If not, see if you have more severe underlying issues to deal with and get rid of your estimation process.
Developers often frown at the request for estimates, because more often than not, the estimates turns into hard deadlines for the given feature.
ReplyDeleteI tend to estimate in stones with 3 different sizes; pebble, stone & boulder.
Pebbles we just do, no further planning needed.
Stones goes to the sprint board.
Boulders needs further breakdown before we can proceed.
Over time you can then go backwards and see how much time do we actually spend on the average pebble and stone.
What this discussion usually leaves out, is the need to give the customer a useful recommendation for project budget. It's fair enough to drop estimating the individual tasks within the project, just pick the most important stuff. But if your are building stuff for someone else (not internal product development), you need some sense of the size of the project itself in order for the customer to know wether to start or not.
ReplyDeleteWe used to estimate in nr of "sheeps". Estimation process i good for the team to get a common understanding of the problem and find the "best way" to solve it, but the process have some significant overhead as well. It is time consuming and some people tend to get ufocused after a while.
ReplyDeleteGreat survey, I'm sure you're getting a great response. aktieanalys
ReplyDeleteIf your looking for Online Illinois license plate sticker renewals then you have need to come to the right place.We offer the fastest Illinois license plate sticker renewals in the state. Technology
ReplyDelete