The Agile Samurai

Turning Lemons into Lemonade

In agile, we accept that our initial, high-level estimates aren’t to be trusted. However, we also understand that budgets need to be created and expectations need to be set.

To make that happen, the warrior does what anyone would do who is looking to firm up any estimate. They build something, measure how long that takes, and use that for planning going forward.

For that to work, we need two things:

• Stories that are sized relatively to each other

• A point-based system to track progress

Let’s look at each of these in more detail and see how they help us plan.

Relative Sizing

Imagine you knew it took ten seconds to eat one chocolate chip cookie, and you were asked to estimate how long it would take you to ...