This session was by Tejaswini M, Agile coach, techniques and best practices of user story estimation & a practical session on How to Write good user stories, Acceptance Criteria and estimating the Stories using different techniques.

1. Greyamp Consulting | 2018
Presenter – Tejaswini M
How to estimate better

2. What do we consider
while doing an
estimation?
While estimating, do
we need to know who
will be working on
that part of the
delivery?
Who does the
estimate?
Does it really matter –
if you are putting
more effort while
doing the actual
work?
Does estimating in
hours mean we know
what our pace of work
should be to ensure
completion on time?

3. Agenda
Quick Overview of Estimates
Experiencing estimation through activities
Different EstimationTechniques

4. Do we really
need
estimates in
Agile?

5. Why Estimation?
Helps understand the Scope of the Sprint
Helps reduce People dependency
Delivery Forecasting

6. What is
Estimation?

7. What are the parameters for estimation?
Risk Effort ComplexityFunctionality
Current
Knowledge

8. How do we do
Estimation?
• Ideal Days
• Story Points

9. Ideal Time
How long something will
take if:
• It’s all you work on
• No one interrupts you
• And everything you
need is available
Ideally
• Monday has 8 hours
• Every week has 40
hours
But instead
Each day we have
• 2 hrs of meeting
• 1 hr of emails
• 1 hr of status reporting
• 3 hrs left for the project work only

10. How Tall are these Buildings?
Relative v/s Absolute
The Great Pyramid The Eiffel Tower Petronas Towers Burj Khalifa
139.5m
324m
452m
828m

11. Story Points
• Story Points are the unit of
measurement for expressing the
overall size of a user story, feature,
or the piece of work.
• The number of story points
associated with a story represents
the overall size of the story.
• Either doubles OR Fibonacci Series
• Fibonacci Series [1,2,3,5, and 8]
• Doubles [1,2,4, and 8]
1 2 3
5 8 13
20 40 100

12. Let’s Paint the Story
Point

14. Estimation techniques
Agile Relative Sizing
Wideband Delphi
Affinity Estimation
Planning Poker

15. How Planning Poker Works
An iterative approach to estimating
Steps:
• Each estimator is given a deck of
cards, each card has a valid estimate
written on it
• Customer/product owner reads a story
and it’s discussed briefly
• Each estimator selects a card that’s his
or her estimate
• Cards are turned over so all can see
them
• Discuss difference (especially outliers)
• Re-estimate until estimates converge
Image source: www.iag.biz/resource/scrum-playing-planning-poker/

16. Those who
do the
work,
estimate
Justify
estimates
Group
Estimate
Relative
Its quick
and fun
Everyone’s
opinion is
heard
Save time
otherwise
spent
debating
One order
of
magnitude
Constrained
with set of
values
No Pressure
to be
accurate

18. Tejaswini Mahadev
https://www.linkedin.com/in/tejaswini-
m-8b861bb6/
Tejaswini.mahadev@greyamp.com