A number without context becomes a commitment
Appraisals are part of everyday life in most software teams. After all, the agile team cannot just start working, but has to plan the stories for the upcoming sprints and coordinate them with the available capacities. And, of course, customers and stakeholders are constantly bringing in new product requirements, and they want to know how complex the implementation of the features is and what it will probably cost.
Very few product developments can therefore do without estimates. Still, they have an extremely bad reputation among development teams. But why is that? has a reason Konstantin Diener identified, namely that a single number without context is declared a commitment or a plan.
In his session on the previous eleventh Tools4AgileTeams conference Konstantin went into approaches how teams come to better estimates and to what extent these are always dependent on the question. Here is the video of the lecture, which also gives experienced teams one or two valuable tips – for example in the form of solving the riddle of why estimates are always higher the more accurate you estimate.
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Further information
From estimates to forecasts – Monte Carlo simulation for beginners
Agile effort estimation: A discourse between customer and developer
Agile estimation in a team: procedures in agile software development
What is NoEstimation and does it really help us plan?