Russ Fletcher is Vice President and Federal Practice Manager of Davisbase a leading provider of Agile training and coaching to government and commercial organizations. He has spent the last six years practicing Agile as an IT manager and CIO, as well as teaching or leading dozens of organizations in their adoption of Agile. Most recently he has been training the Harvard University IT (HUIT) in applying Agile to their environment.

1. Copyright 2013 Davisbase LLC.
Presented by Russ Fletcher
in partnership with
Agile Estimating:
Moving Away from Hours

2. Copyright 2013 Davisbase LLC.
Agile Described...
‣ Agile is a philosophy and a process that drive us to focus
on delivering the highest business value in the
shortest time.
‣ The business sets the priorities. Teams self-organize to
determine the best way to deliver the highest priority
features.
‣ Every two weeks to a month anyone can see real working
software and decide to release it as is or continue to
enhance it.
...in less than 100 Words
Courtesy Mike Cohn

3. Copyright 2013 Davisbase LLC.
Product Delivery
Illustrating the 5 Levels of Agile Planning
1
3
2
4
5
Vision Planning
Yearly by the product owner
Roadmap Planning
Semi-yearly by the product owner
Release Planning
Quarterly by the product owner and team
Sprint Planning
Bi-weekly by the team
Daily Planning
Daily by the team and individuals

4. Copyright 2013 Davisbase LLC.
Release 1 Release 2 Release 3 Release 4
Inventory
Database
Payment
Systems
Security
Fulfillment
Systems
Product Tracking Customer Loyalty
Advertising
Product Roadmap
Product Vision1
2
3
4
5
Agile Overview

5. Copyright 2013 Davisbase LLC.
Estimating Ideal Time
• Basketball game
• How much longer will
the game take?
• Actual game time
remaining is 12:48
• Ideal time is like
basketball game time

6. Copyright 2013 Davisbase LLC.
Estimate Types
• Time-based vs Relative Estimating
• Time-based Estimating focuses on elapsed
time
• Relative Estimating focuses on size and
complexity

7. Copyright 2013 Davisbase LLC.
What People Hear
• What do Customers,
Stakeholders, Marketing
and others do with our
estimates?
• Estimates drive
expectations

8. Copyright 2013 Davisbase LLC.
Games We Play
• If we know that estimates
drive expectations, what
do we do with our
estimates?
• This leads to “estimate
bloat” in highly
dependent, traditional
project plans
Or we INFLATE them!
We pad our
ESTIMATES

9. Copyright 2013 Davisbase LLC.
Relative Estimating
• Not time based
(days, hours, weeks...)
• Size
• Complexity
• Two techniques:
• Triangulation
• Bracketing

10. Copyright 2013 Davisbase LLC.
Story Points
• Unit-less measure of
• Size
• Complexity
• We know that 8 is four times
the size of 2
8
2

11. Copyright 2013 Davisbase LLC.
• Mike Cohn’s Dog Point
exercise
• Assign “dog points” to
the following breeds
based on size and
complexity
Dog Breeds Points
Dachshund
Labrador Retriever
Great Dane
Terrier
German Shepherd
Poodle
Bulldog
St. Bernard
Chihuahua
Relative Estimating
Assigning “dog points” to demonstrate relative sizes

12. Copyright 2013 Davisbase LLC.
The Scale
• Not an infinite scale
• Specific Sequence -
0, 1/2, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 20, 40, 100, ?
• Try to keep it small -
stories estimated too
large are candidates for
being split
• Stay with this sequence!
Relative estimating sequence is based on the
Fibonacci series. Leonardo of Pisa, aka Fibonacci,
studied patterns in nature and found this sequence
utilized again and again. The sequence was
foundational for the discovery of the ‘golden ratio’.

13. Copyright 2013 Davisbase LLC.
Estimating Story Points
• Use comparisons - stories of similar size
• Group stories of similar size to notice
consistency
• Triangulate - don’t compare to only one story

14. Copyright 2013 Davisbase LLC.
Estimating Story Points
• Don’t spend too much time on each story
• Estimate as much as is needed for
planning....nothing more
• Epics (large stories) should be set aside to be
broken down

15. Copyright 2013 Davisbase LLC.
Planning Poker
Using PlanningPoker.com
• Steps for playing planning poker
• Each estimator has a set of cards on their screen
• Customer/Product Owner describes a story and
allows for brief discussion
• Each player selects a card on their screen for their
estimate
• Once everyone has estimated, then all cards are
shown at the same time
• Discuss differences
• Re-estimate or discuss to reach convergence

16. Copyright 2013 Davisbase LLC.
Macro Estimating
• Relative estimating/Story Points works fine for
small pieces of functionality, but...
• ...how do I do project-level estimation?

17. Copyright 2013 Davisbase LLC.
Product Delivery
Illustrating the 5 Levels of Agile Planning
1
3
2
4
5
Vision Planning
Yearly by the product owner
Roadmap Planning
Semi-yearly by the product owner
Release Planning
Quarterly by the product owner and team
Sprint Planning
Bi-weekly by the team
Daily Planning
Daily by the team and individuals

18. Copyright 2013 Davisbase LLC.
Release Planning
• Release Plan provides a connection from the
Roadmap to our Sprints
• Provides visibility to how we deliver
• Resources
• Timing
• Backlog Priority

19. Copyright 2013 Davisbase LLC.
Team Velocity
• How much can the team FINISH in a single sprint
• Factors effecting team velocity
• Number of resources
• Interruptions
• Multi-tasking
• Over time, team velocity is derived from actual
data

20. Copyright 2013 Davisbase LLC.
Velocity
• Understanding the team’s
capacity (velocity) will enable
release planning
• Over time utilize multiple data
points to derive velocity:
• Fastest pace
• Average pace
• Slowest pace
Slowest
Average
Fastest
Using velocity to plan the release

21. Copyright 2013 Davisbase LLC.
Release Planning
• Take into consideration:
• Stories
• Priorities
• Story Points
• Velocity
• Customer/Product Owner input

22. Copyright 2013 Davisbase LLC.
Release Planning
Sprint 1
Story A - 3 pts
Story B - 2 pts
Story D - 5 pts
Sprint 2
Story C - 5 pts
Story E - 2 pts
Story F - 3 pts
Sprint 3
Story G - 8 pts
Story H - 3 pts
Release 1

23. Copyright 2013 Davisbase LLC.
Release Planning
Sprint 1
Story A - 3 pts
Story B - 2 pts
Story D - 5 pts
Sprint 2
Story C - 5 pts
Story E - 2 pts
Story F - 3 pts
Sprint 3
Story G - 8 pts
Story H - 3 pts
Sprint 4
Integration
Sprint
Release 1
Continuous Integration can save significant time

24. Copyright 2013 Davisbase LLC.
Release 1 Release 2 Release 3 Release 4
Inventory
Database
Payment
Systems
Security
Fulfillment
Systems
Product Tracking Customer Loyalty
Advertising
Product Roadmap
Product Vision1
2
3
4
5
Agile Overview

25. Copyright 2013 Davisbase LLC.
Thank You!
Russ Fletcher
VP Business Dev.
Davisbase, LLC
russ.fletcher@davisbase.com
(801) 636-4802