What's the point? Everything is an "8". Introducing your team to #NoEstimates

We have all been there. It’s Monday, 3rd hour of a 7 hour planning meeting. So far, your team has estimated 2 stories and it’s a good chance that you are going to be delaying the start of the sprint so that you can finish this meeting tomorrow. Your product owner is driving out minute details of the work so that the team can agree on the same number of points. In your head you are saying "What's the point?" Finally, the devs agree that this story is a 5 pointer...then all of a sudden your tester wants to add 3 more points. So...it's an 8...again. Like the last story that we spent two hours on.

The main premise of the no estimates movement is centered on the idea that spending time getting "accurate" estimates is mostly wasted when compared to spending that same time building the next most valuable feature for your product.

In truth, no estimates doesn’t actually mean no estimates. This talk will focus on strategies that you can apply to your team's next planning meeting that will help you spend less time going back and forth on a made up number and more time doing valuable work. We will cover some of the traps of the standard agile estimation model and what motivates organizations to want to spend time estimating.

Transcript

1. What’s The Point? Everything’s an “8”! Introducing your team to #NoEstimates
2. Anthony Palumbi On the internet as @apalumbi "The more detailed we made our plans, the longer our cycle times became” ~ Donald G. Reinertsen Introduction to us Jim Mirra On the internet as @jimmirra “…software people are terrible at estimating, because humans are terrible at estimating. Let’s not just try harder. Let’s find a better way.” ~ Ron Jeffries
3. Why do we estimate?
4. There can be value in estimating… ❖ Predicting Cost ❖ Prioritization ❖ Delivery Dates ❖ Project Management ❖ Mistake Avoidance
5. ❖ Treated as Contract ❖ Upfront work ❖ Decided by others ❖ Not fed back to organization ...and there can be pain as well
6. “Standard” “Agile” Estimation Model
7. We estimate a lot when being agile... ❖ T-shirt sizing / Swag ❖ Burnups ❖ Release Trains ❖ Backlog refinements ❖ Planning Meeting ❖ Task Hours ❖ Burndowns
8. ...is all of it valuable? Yes...if it doesn’t take a lot of time.
9. Agile Estimate Traps
10. Where do teams get trapped... ❖ What is a point? ❖ Upfront time writing stories ❖ Gaming the metrics ❖ Comparing teams velocities ❖ Doing refinement in planning
11. ...and how do they get free. Baby steps.
12. Strategies
13. Estimate first. Discuss second. ❖ Reduce time spent per story when there is “agreement”
14. Agenda Driven Refinement ❖ Time box pointing conversation ❖ Talk about a story once per refinement
15. Point once ❖ Even if things change ❖ Eliminate point choices
16. “Twitter-sized” stories ❖ Focused information to allow for consumption
17. Everything is an “8” ❖ All work is treated with same point estimate ❖ Work with story creator to make “8” sized stories.
18. It’s a journey, not a destination… so please share your stories. Share your experiments and outcomes with us on social media.
19. Thank you for listening
20. References https://ronjeffries.com/xprog/articles/the-noestimates-movement/ https://pragprog.com/magazines/2013-02/estimation-is-evil https://lithespeed.com/throw-agile-estimation-vs-noestimates/ https://www.infoq.com/news/2015/10/planning-noestimates https://dzone.com/articles/stop-estimating-the-noestimates-movement https://www.pmi.org/learning/featured-topics/project-estimating https://project-management-knowledge.com/definitions/s/swag/ http://www.jamesshore.com/Blog/Pair%20Hours%20vs%20Points.html http://www.jamesshore.com/Agile-Book/estimating.html https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/evolving-leadership-from-command-and-control-bob-marcus/ Freakonomic podcast - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9ER2YgI0c0 https://i.pinimg.com/originals/7f/cc/b0/7fccb03a99c29ca90290709cf08afc7c.gif http://www.onedesk.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Capture3.png https://i.pinimg.com/originals/57/77/e9/5777e93db851fa9363cef1b921aa43fa.jpg https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*lFp_3jQNnOcstykG44ZuCA.jpeg Dilberts