1. Agile Estimation
Every project has its own uncertainty and no matter which methodology you choose there will
be some degree of unpredictability, especially early on in a project. Agile methodology which
relies heavily on team coordination, communication can help you set expectations and manage
that uncertainty. Over the years organizations have implemented agile methods to varying
degrees, to increase speed to market their product, increase productivity, growth strategy,
improve operation effectiveness processes, improve product quality etc.
Many organizations that are new to agile process seem to struggle with estimation. It’s
important to clear the air about Agile estimation and how it can provide results if implemented
in a right way. Estimates can help an organization to set a goal and expectations about what a
team can deliver, but due to lack of poor planning teams struggle with estimation. In many
cases, it has been observed that things turn out to be really rough if things are estimated
without proper planning and understanding that may eventually jeopardize the whole project.
It’s a proven fact that to make a precise prediction in a project you need to have a correct
estimation. There are lot of things that need to be taken into consideration while calculating
budget in any project like infrastructure, time frame, man hours etc. to get an idea of a plan and
a goal to measure against. Once in a project you set a goal, teams need to come up with plans
and estimate tasks. A method that has been widely used in agile methodology to correct flaws
in estimation techniques is planning poker. Planning poker theory sometimes called Scrum
poker is a simple but powerful process that corrects any false precision and makes team-
estimating faster, more accurate, and more fun.
Another method that has been widely used nowadays by Agile teams is a T-Shirt size
estimation methods. It has been evolved as one of the most popular way of estimation in Agile
development methodologies in the recent years. The simple reason behind its popularity is its
simplicity, an idea to give rough estimates to tasks in the form of T-shirt sizes rather than
going for a precise numbers or an estimated time. The catch here is the work is estimated by
the size of a T-shirt sizes. According to the team convenience each team may define these sizes
in its own terms. Some may associate time frame range with each size for e.g. S or small size T-
shirt may be estimated less than one hour. M or medium size T-shirt is between one and two
hours. Some may associate T-shirt sizes with points rather than duration that are later added to
an aggregate estimate. The idea here is: instead of arguing over how many minutes or hours a
task is going to take, team agrees with duration or points and move on.

2. Following are the key issues of the agile estimation process that most teams underestimate:
 Overlooking review effort, inspection and testing process
 Not to take into consideration the importance of having paper documentation
 Underestimating cost that include expenses like travel and meeting costs (especially
large projects)
 Missing special testing requirements
 Underestimating project management / support effort, retrospective and demo meeting
 No plan for resistance after delivery if in case a support period is required
 Poor communication and team structure
It is pivotal that a team before the start of a project should do some basic research such as to
collect important information about the requirements, do some thinking about the outcome,
and then put this information through an estimation algorithm of choice. Estimation is a
complex process and if the planning and understanding is good in a team so will be the
estimation. An estimate in the context of an agile project is all about shared understanding of
requirement and solution.