Better Estimates, Better Outcomes
Bart has been in ecommerce for over 20 years, and can't imagine a better job to have. He is interested in all things agile, or anything new to learn.
Estimates are at the heart of the agile planning process. Individual units of work get estimated in terms of story points; a team’s capacity for work, measured in velocity, is estimated using past iterations and current availability; and releases are scheduled using estimates of when epics will be complete and when the team and market are ready to support a new version being deployed.
Sometimes, teams will push back on creating them—but without at least some amount of estimation, creating an agile plan becomes incredibly difficult (or even impossible) to complete. And yet, estimates have a reputation of being inaccurate, immediately outdated, or possibly a complete waste of time. While these two seem to be in conflict, in reality, agile handles it rather well.
Fortunately, agile doesn’t rely on fixed planning in the same way as traditional waterfall methodologies. In a traditional setting, projects are planned in a rigid fashion, and even being a little late on a task can have outsized cascading effects. Dependencies need to be updated, plans and gantt charts recalibrated, and final deliverables can be delayed by weeks, months or even years—all due to a task early on in the plan running over by even a seemingly small amount.
Built into the agile process is the ability to replan at frequent intervals, allowing the team to cut some items short&…
Please log in or sign up below to read the rest of the article.
|
"What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the wish to find out, which is the exact opposite." - Bertrand Russell |
