Weigh the Work Ahead

  Agile   Estimating   Manufacturing   Scrum   ProjectsAtWork  

How can your team accurately predict and communicate meaningful delivery timelines when it is constantly fielding changes from the multiple business units it serves? Here is a detailed look at how one Scrum-centered team used a four-step approach to estimate timelines for work far into the future.

The average project manager is intimately familiar with the “Iron Triangle” of scope, budget and timeline. While one may have the best intentions to toe the line and not budge on any of these constraints, the simple truth is that this is more often the exception than it is the norm. On the contrary, practitioners of Scrum realize that of these three constraints, only one can truly vary — scope. Meanwhile, budget and timeline remain fixed. It is the latter of these two constraints, timeline, which often proposes one of the most prevalent challenges to practitioners and stakeholders of Scrum alike.

It is this very challenge that we will attempt to simplify so that new and current users of Scrum may have a guide for accurately estimating timelines for their work far into the future.

Let’s consider the following arrangement for a hypothetical business unit that is practicing Scrum. In this arrangement, assume that IT is responsible for servicing Design, Procurement, Manufacturing, Logistics and Finance. 

Given that each of these vertical …

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