The Value of Collaborative Estimation; A Case Study
Presentation Description
The team, running Scrum by-the-book for three months, was continually failing to meet its delivery dates. As a result, trust between the business managers and the team degraded almost to a point-of-no-return. The team, which held bi-weekly retrospectives, could not pinpoint the problems causing its inability to ship. Mitch Lacey was asked to assist the team in finding the root cause of its problems. He analyzed multiple aspects of the project—from individual work items to planning meetings. While multiple issues were identified, one thing stood out above all others—the estimation process used had caused the team to miss its deadlines. Mitch discusses the estimation problems the team was having, how they were discovered and fixed, and the resulting improvement in financial and customer satisfaction.
Session Learning Objectives
At session completion, attendees will have heard what impacts of poor estimation have on a team and seeds that teams can use to grow to refine their estimation practices, identify information points that people should look for when in a similar situation and how to help sell these changes to people who are not familiar with agile.
Presentation Delivered Before
This presentation was delivered before 80 people at the SQE Agile Development 2007 conference in Orlando, Florida.
- The impacts of poor estimation - this section covers the problems and techniques the team encountered, the changes that were implemented and the benefit the team received in the end.
- How to fix it - this section outlines various estimation techniques, finalizing on one, planning poker, discussing it in depth.