Agile Estimating User Stories

There is an interesting article on estimating agile software with user story points   agile estimating.  While the intent of the article avoids the big picture, I think it does a decent job at the lowest levels.  Some of its sage advice includes:

When building a size scale, use the powers of two rather than 1, 2, 3: Because business people can grasp the difference between a 2 and an 8 in size better than a 1 and a 3.

Require Attendance of All Developers: Since any of them may end up working on the story.

Redo stale estimates: If the project changes, change the estimates.

Bring “Special Snacks”: This is one I wouldn’t have thought of… The author suggests bringing high quality snacks, such as fresh bakery goods to the estimation sessions to make people happier and more cooperative.

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And a second article on agile software planning poker… Which is essentially a technique to make root level estimating more like Delphi. 

All these root level techniques share the risks of manual over and underestimating which can actually make a project take longer and cost more.

Related posts:

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2. Estimation & Agile Development… Plan and Control Agile Projects While at the IBM Rational user conference in Orlando I (Dan Galorath) attended a briefing by Scott Ambler, practice leader...
3. Combining Agile and Traditional Development Gary Gack , software process consultant, did an interesting webinar and discussed the combining of Agile and traditional development approaches. ...
4. Estimating Poorly Defined Agile Projects From Twitter today came the following definition: Epicac – In software development with Scrum, a feature so horribly defined it...
5. Peaceful Coexistence of Agile Development and CMMI In the SEI paper “CMMI or Agile: Why Not Embrace Both“  a truce between Agile and CMMI is called for. ...

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