As an agile coach, it seems one of the areas that teams struggle with the most is in estimation. And by estimation I’m implying some of the following:
- When do you “task out” the story? Who provides estimates for the tasks? And in what units?
- How do you breakdown, estimate, and re-estimate user stories? When are you “done” estimating them?
- Story points are relative and high level – should we convert them to hours or time?
- At scale, let’s say 10-20 teams, the estimates are interconnected across some teams. How do we handle dependencies and integration?
Mishkin Berteig has published a nice overview of 9 estimation techniques. As part of this article, I will review each one from my own perspective. Some I’ve used and others I’ve not. I’ll share my own stories to compliment the techniques.