If you don’t know what an estimate is, you can’t avoid using them. So here’s my attempt to define what is an estimate.The “estimates” that I’m concerned about are those that can easily (by omission, incompetence or malice) be turned into commitments. I believe Software Development is better seen as a discovery process (even simple …
I hear this a lot in the #NoEstimates discussion: you must estimate to know what you can deliver for a certain price, time or effort. Actually, you don’t. There’s a different way to look at your organization and your project. Organizations and projects have an inherent capacity, that capacity is a result of many different …
A friend shared with me a few stories about how Estimates are destroying value in his organization. He was kind enough to allow me to share these stories anonymously. Enjoy the reading, I know I did! 🙂 The story of the customer that wanted software, but got the wrong estimates instead Once, one of our …
Every time a software project is started, a dance starts: the dance of project approval. Decision makers and project delivery team take different positions at a table, some ask questions, others do their best to respond, given that these questions are typically about the future. Some of the questions are so much into the future …
Last week we did not cover all the questions on #NoEstimates. Twitter gave us a lot more questions than could be listed last week, and even more interesting ones. Read on for the questions and my take on their meaning. How do I choose between options or opportunities (without having estimates regarding the cost)? Choices …
This article is the companion to a talk that myself and @josephpelrine gave at OOP 2012. We have a lot to learn from our ancestors. One that I want to focus on for this post is Galileo.Galileo was what we would call today a techie. He loved all things tech and was presented an interesting …
In a meeting today I was graphically reminded of how some of the basic concepts in software development still escape many of us. Case in point, the meaning of capacity. In many people’s minds capacity still means “how many man-hours we have have available for real work”. This is plain wrong. Let’s decompose this assumption …
I’ve discussed this idea a few times with some friends, but I’ll concede that the ultimate argument for stopping to estimate altogether is still to come… In the meanwhile here is more food for thought. Rob Bowley argues why estimations are bad in software development. My favorite part of his presentation: [In a study discussed …
Lasse has written a great post on estimation using the Story Point concept and the Planning poker practice. Some time ago I also wrote a post on how to make these Planning Poker sessions timeboxed but still effective. If you are interested in estimation and planning in Agile Software Development these posts are worth a …
Just after writing the post about about Never ending design discussions I found one post from Lasse about story points. I think these two posts go very well together, as story point-based estimations is what I use for the Timeboxed estimation pattern.
