Broken Agile: Stories from the Trenches, Second Edition

CHAPTER 13

Challenges with Estimations

One of the biggest challenges teams have when adopting Agile is the idea of estimating work. When you are used to estimating everything in hours, it is difficult to start estimating work in terms of points or relative sizing. It takes time to adjust to this new way of estimating work. The urge to spend a lot of time getting into every detail of a piece of work before committing to an estimate is sometimes hard to resist. The more estimating a team does, the less team members will think in terms of time and the more they will think in terms of points. The key is to understand why Agile uses points and to understand what goes into determining the points on a User Story.

Real-Life Stories

Story 1: Estimation ...