Agile Estimation and Planning

I had the pleasure of attending a workshop on Agile Estimation and Planning this Monday, presented by Mitch Lacey, author of Adventures in Promiscuous Pairing, at the Executive Center of the Doubletree hotel in Portland, OR.

The workshop was organized by the Software Associate of Oregon (SAO) and thankfully subsidized by the government so it cost a tenth of what it normally would.

Here are some key, basic points to share with you.

1) At the daily stand up, say what you did yesterday, what you plan to do today and what is blocking you if anything.

2) Story points are different from ideal hours. Story points are for gauging the relative size of a user story, so the product backlog can be managed. Ideal hours are for scoping out the tasks needed to bring the user story to fruition.

3) If you have a large number of stories to estimate, start with what you feel is the smallest and estimate it at 1. Then estimate the rest relative to the effort of the others.

Overall, it was a useful workshop for me. The attendees were a mix of developers, QA and "PM"s (like myself) with varying levels of familiarity to Agile processes, so he had he work cut out for him. On top of having a cold.

If he were to do another workshop in the area, I would probably go to it.