Manage Your Project Portfolio

Fix the Queue Length for a Team

A related option to fixing the number of in-process tasks for a project is to fix the number of in-process tasks for a team. Each task takes as long as it takes—although this works well when you have relatively smaller tasks and works less well as the task size increases.

At Agile 2007, Arlo Belshee discussed the idea of what he called a Disneyland queue. With a fixed-length queue (he uses a queue of seven items) and historical velocity, the team estimates a “your time from here” estimate for the last item in the queue:

Note that the team doesn’t estimate each item in the queue. The product owner, customer, ...