So after this exercise, you now have "total story points to complete project" - what do you now do with that information? Do you now take the team's velocity to determine how long this project will take? As you were going through it, I imagined that the sizing part of it was a bit arbitrary, but wouldn't the team need to think about the estimations the same way they would when estimating at the sprint level? Otherwise, this exercise really wouldn't tell you "how long" but really just the size of the work relative to another piece of work. Or is this exercise only intended to be like t-shirt sizing and not an actual estimation of how long it could take?
Great question Audrey. Indeed, you can use the team's velocity, but it's important that you project your estimation of the project in a range. (E.g. we expect to be able to complete this backlog in 2 to 3 months). There are a lot of subtleties to this approach (maturity of the team, stage of the product, etc.), so I have put it on my video backlog. The video will be available early 2022 🙂
What's one thing you would like to learn about agile estimating and planning? 👇
@Philipp Wolschner great topics! I have added them to my video backlog 📷
Needed this, thanks!
What is the follow up when (most) people have a low confidence? Take away the doubts and re-do?
Yes, that could be an option 👌 Or if confidence is really low for valid reasons, consider don't doing the project at all.
So after this exercise, you now have "total story points to complete project" - what do you now do with that information? Do you now take the team's velocity to determine how long this project will take? As you were going through it, I imagined that the sizing part of it was a bit arbitrary, but wouldn't the team need to think about the estimations the same way they would when estimating at the sprint level? Otherwise, this exercise really wouldn't tell you "how long" but really just the size of the work relative to another piece of work. Or is this exercise only intended to be like t-shirt sizing and not an actual estimation of how long it could take?
Great question Audrey. Indeed, you can use the team's velocity, but it's important that you project your estimation of the project in a range.
(E.g. we expect to be able to complete this backlog in 2 to 3 months).
There are a lot of subtleties to this approach (maturity of the team, stage of the product, etc.), so I have put it on my video backlog.
The video will be available early 2022 🙂