Definition of DONE! 10 Point Checklist
A key principle of agile software development is “done means DONE!” To be more specific, here’s a 10 point checklist of what constitutes ‘feature complete’… Code produced (all ‘to do’ items in code...
View ArticleWhat Is The Point In Estimating?
One technique used by agile development teams is the idea of estimating product features using points. This has a few distinct advantages over estimating in physical units of time. 1. Estimating is...
View ArticleUnderstanding Your Velocity
In a few entries on my blog, I have referred to Velocity and only briefly explained what it is. I think it’s about time I explain properly for those not familiar with it. Velocity is terminology from...
View ArticleAgile Release Planning
A software release may result from multiple iterations (or ‘Sprints’ in Scrum). Sprint Planning is about planning what’s included in the next iteration. Whereas Release Planning is about planning...
View ArticleAgile Project Planning
Projects are a necessary evil :-) But necessary they are. Some people really feel the need to understand precisely what the project will cost and exactly long it will take. If this is the basis for...
View ArticleEstimating in Points Seems a Bit Stupid!
A while ago I blogged about “What’s the Point in estimating?“. To be honest, I didn’t understand the concept of estimating in Points when we first adopted agile. Actually, I thought it sounded a bit...
View ArticleBurndown User Stories, Rather Than Tasks
I was very interested to read this blog post from Ron Jeffries about burning down user stories rather than tasks. Excuse the pun, but this is a hot topic for me at the moment :-) If it’s possible to...
View ArticlePlanning Poker – Agile Estimating
Planning Poker is an estimating technique used by many agile software development teams. Like many agile development techniques, Planning Poker is very simple. Simple, but effective. First of all,...
View ArticleEstimating in Agile Development
I’ve written quite a bit about various aspects of estimating in agile development. I think it’s about time I joined up the dots… Product Backlog The Product Backlog is a feature list. Or a list of User...
View ArticleTo Estimate or Not To Estimate? That is the Question!
Lean software development shares many of the key principles of agile software development. Although one of the key aspects of lean development is all about identifying and eliminating waste from the...
View ArticleAgile Estimating: The Secret To Delivering On Time
For decades, delivering on time has been the holy grail of software development. I’ve been doing agile software development for quite a few years now. I’ve seen many benefits, but one of the most...
View ArticleAgile Software Development Estimating Experiment
I recently came across this agile estimating experiment by Lance Walton. The article is quite old now but I still found it very interesting… In recent years, I’ve had quite a fascination with the...
View ArticleAgile Estimating in Scrum – Why Estimate Twice?
In my series of posts “How to Implement Scrum in 10 Easy Steps“, I refer to two stages of estimating: Step 2 is how to estimate your Product Backlog. Step 4 is estimating tasks in Sprint Planning....
View Article5 Reasons Why You Should Stop Estimating User Stories
1. You don’t waste time on estimation Estimation takes time. Even if you do planning poker and use story points, it still takes time. What do you do to improve estimation accuracy? You gather some...
View ArticleDetermining How Many Task Hours an Agile Team Can Accomplish
Note from Mike… I want to welcome Jim Magers to the LeadingAgile team. Jim is doing a project with me in Minneapolis, and I asked him to join me here and share some of his experiences from the field....
View ArticleWhy Estimate?
Most people think about estimating as a way to figure out how big stuff is, so we can decide what we are going to build and when we are going to build it. More often than not, I find myself using...
View ArticleEstimating Non-Functional Requirements
A few weeks back I promised someone I would blog about the unique challenges of estimating non-functional requirements. First, let’s remember that a non-functional requirement is a requirement that is...
View ArticleEstimating a Full Backlog Based on a Sample of It
I want to address a question I was sent recently and that I get asked about once a month. The question has to do with how we estimate how many hours it will take to deliver a given product backlog if...
View ArticleThe Real Reason We Estimate
Over the past few months, various blog posts have popped up talking about estimation, how estimation is unnecessary, how estimation is waste… and that maybe we should stop estimating entirely and just...
View ArticleSeeing How Well a Team’s Story Points Align from One to Eight
The topic of how well a team estimates two point stories relative to one point stories (and so on) has come up in a couple of comments and replies on this blog recently, so let’s discuss it. Here’s a...
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