2p ÷ 0.

5e = 4x
simply said:
double productivity in half effort
That’s Agile..
Topic: Agile Planning and Estimation
Agenda:
 Importance of Planning and Planning Levels
 Bird’s Eye view of The Agile Lifecycle and Agile Team
 Agile Planning and Estimating Principles
 Levels of Agile Requirements, Estimating and Sizing Units
 Estimation Methods and How to Size points
 Complexity Bucket method
 Sample and Examples
Agile Planning

“When preparing for battle, I

find that Plans are useless, but
planning is indispensable”
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
6 Planning Levels

The Team is Involved in Planning Steps 4,5,6

The Agile Lifecycle
Agile Team
Agile Planning & Estimating Principles
Level of Agile Requirements
 Estimating
“It is better to be roughly right than precisely wrong.”
—John Maynard Keynes

Relative vs Absolute Estimating

 Relative Estimating
 focuses on size and complexity - this happens at the story level

 Absolute Estimating
 focuses on ideal time - this happens at the task level
Sizing Units

 Story Points
A measure of the relative size and complexity of the story
 How much effort and how hard is this story compared to
others on our backlog ?
 Avoids the need (and waste) behind precise estimates

 Ideal Time
How long will it take if
 It’s all you work on
 No one interrupts you
 And everything you need is available
The ‘Right Method’ for the ‘Right Time’
How to Size Points ?
Estimating Story Points using Complexity Buckets (Elatta Method)
 Sample of User Story Estimation table
Work Categorization Total
Bucket Story
d
Story ID Summary Design Rounding Points
Development Testing =a+b+c
a e =d+e
b c

1 Story Xyz L => 1 M => 2 L => 1 4 -1 3

2 Story Abc (has multiple
L => 2 M => 2 L => 3 7 +1 8
external integrations)
3 Story Def (minor/cosmetic
0 M => 1 L => 1 2 0 2
change)

 Work Categorization
 Categorization can be based on specific needs e.g. Design, Development, Testing, Documentation
or it could be User Interface, Business Logic, Database, Integration, Testing etc.
 Keep the Categorization limited to 3 or 4 categories max for speedy calculation
 For each category use scale of Light L=1, Medium M=2, High H=3, Complex C=4
 Bucket Rounding is to round it to the nearest Fibonacci Bucket number (shown in previous slide)
Sample Release Planning Wall
Example Backlog
References

 Mike Cohn’s video on Agile Estimating (available on youtube)

 Sally Elatta’s video on Agile Estimating and Planning (available on youtube)
Let’s get started..

Manish Agrawal
eManish@gmail.com
eManish