Estimating Effort - Adaptation
I've been running the informed intuition (or if you prefer, “disciplined intuition”) approach to estimating effort for close to six months now. For the most part, it has gone very well. The primary objective - inspire and support a conversation around the effort needed to complete a story - has definitely been realized. Along the way the process has shifted to better support both the conversation and the team's ability to internalize the process.
Originally, it was proposed that teams rate each of the effort characteristics on a sliding scale - 1 to 10 or 1 to 15, or whatever the team decided was most useful. Feedback from the teams lead to the discovery that it is easier to evaluate each effort characteristic using the modified Fibonacci scale rather than a sliding scale. This provides continuity across the method in that everything about a story's effort value is considered using the same scale. It also reinforces the rationale behind the use of the Fibonacci scale and seems to facilitating the team's ability to internalize the method. They are moving more quickly when deriving effort values.
A second adaptation is the use of several sets of characteristics, depending on the type of story, the predominant functional area represented by the team, and the nature of the work. For example, a story that involves the development of a computer board has a different set of criteria from stories that involve the creation of firmware for the board or the UI/UX features of the hardware product. The sets usually contain 3 or 4 common characteristics, such as "complexity" or "dependencies." However, the hardware board may include something like "part sourcing" or "compliance testing." This illustrates the importance of having the team deconstruct what "effort" means in the context of their world. When they determine the characteristics, the follow-on conversations about the effort are much more robust and meaningful.
In essence, this method is a reflection of the product owner's responsibility for the "what" of the story and the team's responsibility for figuring out the "how" of the story. "What I want," says the product owner, "is an estimate of the effort involved to complete this story." The teams effort criteria demonstrate to the product owner how they arrive at any particular value.
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