Estimation Meeting

The goal of the estimation meeting is to get a sense of the complexity of proposed development tasks. Estimations are done in story points and used to re-prioritize tasks as well as to measure the velocity of the development team. As estimations are in general not exact and get outdated quickly, only soon-to-be-build tasks should get estimated.

Basics

Frequency: Weekly on Monday 4pm

Duration: As short as possible

Participants: PM, Devs

Goal

1. Introduce story

• Remind about the connected feature:

  1. Which screen(s) are affected

  2. User journey changes

  3. Design changes

• Developers quickly brainstorm about complexity/ approach

2. Do estimation poker

• Developers simultaneously vote on the estimation to not bias each other

• Type points: 0, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13 or 21 into the chat (Fibonacci scale)

• Enter points into task

3. Decide on upcoming week’s priorities

• Move tasks back into product board that were estimated unexpectedly complex

• Move high-priority tasks into ready to develop column in clubhouse

• Sort ready for development column according to new priorities and assign owners.

We do estimation with Story points. The key points about estimation with points are:

• Raw values are unimportant, it’s the ratio between them that matters. For example, a 5 point story would be 5 times more complex, harder, riskier than a 1 point story.

• Story point is a function of:

  • effort

  • risks and uncertainty

  • complexity

When assigning a story point we should consider all these factors.

Examples

Effort

Adding 1 field to a form requires less effort than adding 100 fields, but it doesn’t mean that 100 fields would take 100 points more of estimation, given that we can benefit of economies of scale when adding the fields.

Risks and uncertainty

Adding a field to a form in a brand new app is easier than adding a field to an app that has old, unstable, non-tested legacy code.

Complexity

Adding 100 fields to a form is less complex than implement credit card payments.

Poker planning

This is how we do estimation as a team.

• What is poker planning?
• Poker planning web app

External references

• https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/what-are-story-points
• https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/the-best-way-to-establish-a-baseline-when-playing-planning-poker