Presentation about Agile planning and estimation techniques for the students of Kaunas University of Technology in Lithuania.

1. AGILE PLANNING &
ESTIMATING
Laurynas Antanavičius
Product Manager @ Data Dog
2014.10.01

2. ABOUT US
• Custom web development and support
• Cloud-based application and software development
• B2B, B2C eCommerce solutions
• Specialised in PHP
• Over 35 developers
• Wide base of clients: UK, US, UAE, Canada, Luxembourgh,
France…

3. http://vimeo.com/107405318

4. OUR TEAM
• Crypto-Currency exchange / Forex market
• 6 members in the development team
• Agile - Scrum, TDD, CI, CD
• PHP & GO
• Write tests before each line of code (TDD & CI)
• Ship the feature as soon as it is ready (CD)
• Focus on performance & quality

5. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYGd6Eo1aUw

6. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9bqA3JfSBc

7. AGILE PLANNING & ESTIMATING
And why this is contradictory

8. FEATURES
COST SCHEDULE
Fixed
Estimated
PLAN
DRIVEN
(WATERFALL)

9. FEATURES
COST SCHEDULE
Fixed
Estimated
VALUE
DRIVEN
(AGILE)

10. Customer collaboration
over
Contract negotiation

11. Instead of saying “We will deliver these
features probably at this price and
probably at this deadline”

12. We can say “We will work until this
deadline at this price and we will deliver
the features that bring the most value
for the business”

13. AGILE PLANNING
AGILE VALUE DRIVEN
DEVELOPMENT

14. How do we determine value?

15. You have to know what it is about and
why it is valuable for the business.
Project summary
Project objectives
Business requirements / limitations
1

16. Project summary:
The website will act as the primary source of information and point of contact for
any matters relating to the university business incubator. The main problem with
the current website is that it lacks flair and is not easy to maintain and/or update.
The key aim of the hub is to:
Showcase events organised through the platform.
Advertise companies with which it has partnered.
Present case studies from researchers carrying out secondments in industry.
Links to research centres and groups in the university, particularly within the
departments of Electronic & Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.
The key measurable objectives are:
Increase the number of enquiries about the hub and its offerings via the website.
Gain press attention.

17. Set it with the Project Owner, write
it down and check it periodically.
2

18. Prepare a Product Backlog with
PO
3
Prioritised feature list
Mimimally Marketable Feature
Very detailed for the most important features that
are next in development

19. Working software
over
Comprehensive documentation

20. Progressive
elaboration -
top priority
upcoming
items must be
defined in
detail

21. Define the length of the next
iterration
4
Timeboxing
Separate budget, schedule, deliverables
It is advisable to keep it fixed

22. Plan the upcoming iterration by
choosing the amount of work for
development
5
The team must be clear about comitments
“These are the features that we will deliver in the
next iterration”

24. HOW DO WE KNOW HOW
MUCH WE CAN DELIVER?

25. AGILE VALUE DRIVEN
DEVELOPMENT &
ESTIMATING

26. We must understand that estimates are
just estimates and they can be
fundamentally wrong.

27. twitter.com #NOESTIMATES

28. ESTIMATING
DELIVERY

29. ! But how do we tell the client
the project end date?

30. We can set the maximum
number of weeks that we will
work on the project that is
reasonable within the scope

31. ! But how do we tell the PO
about the difficulty of the task?

32. Let’s go back to some of the
Agile iterration planning
techniques

33. Stickies are your best friend!

34. Relative sizing / story points1
Relative sizing is more precise than hours
(A – C is twice as far as A – B)
Estimating relative size is much quicker
It shows the measure of relative size / complexity
It is a universal number for everyone

35. As a visitor, I need to see an error message if I
entered my login credentials incorrectly.
As a visitor, I need to subscribe to the newsletter.
As an administrator, I need to edit newsletter
subscription message template.
As an administrator, I need to set the price margin
for each order in the market

36. Wideband Delphi / planning poker2
Consensus-based technique for estimating effort
Each estimator gets a deck of cards with values:
0, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 20, 40, and 100
High and low estimates are discussed for the
reasons why their estimates are different

37. Affinity estimating3
Affinity Estimating is a technique many teams use
to quickly and easily estimate (in Story Points) a
large number of user stories.
User Stories are put into groups that require a
similar effort to produce.

38. Ideal time4
Ideal Time excludes non-programming time
“Ideal time” – time spent exclusively on the task
When you bill the client, you have to take into
account the real time

39. Used to check if the amount of work in the
upcoming sprint is adequate
Measures performance
Acknowledges that performance is not fixed to 40h
per week
Sum of Story points = Team capacity
TEAM CAPACITY

40. First iterration
The amount of work chosen in story points = Capacity
Next iteration
Capacity of the previous iterration + additional work done*
* Can be equal or higher, because our productivity is
constantly increasing

41. AGILE VALUE DRIVEN
DEVELOPMENT &
DELIVERY

42. Responding to change
over
Following a plan

43. WAIT FOR IT..
Questions?