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Agile Development team

Last post 02:29 pm February 16, 2022 by Jaya Agnihotri
4 replies
05:51 am February 5, 2022

A newly formed development team experienced difficulty with accurately estimating product backlog items. As a result, the team failed to deliver all of the features in the sprint backlog for the past two iterations.

What should the team do to improve the accuracy of their estimates?

  1. Decrease the sprint time box until the team is able to deliver the entire agreed-upon sprint backlog in a single sprint
  2. Discuss estimating techniques in the daily scrum meeting
  3. Increase the size of the development team until the team is able to deliver the entire agreed-upon sprint backlog in a single sprint
  4. Begin tracking estimated effort metrics as an input to performance evaluation

I think the answer is 4. 

Reason: ans 1- Dev team cannot decrease the sprint time box

ans 2 - daily scrum is not for discussing topics.

ans3 - is incorrect.

 

Advise please


09:27 pm February 7, 2022

No action is necessarily required. There is no evidence that the team has failed to provide Done increments which meet a Sprint Goal. In other words, there is no indication that the Developers' estimates are unfit for the purpose of meeting their commitments.


11:13 pm February 7, 2022

As @Ian Mitchell points out, that question is not a valid question related to Scrum.  The Scrum framework says nothing about completing all the items in the Sprint Backlog.  The only concern is whether the Developers are meeting the Sprint Goals and are they delivering increments that satisfy the Definition of Done. 

Even if that wasn't true, there is no right answer provided for that scenario.  The correct answer would be to discuss this in the Sprint Retrospective so that the Scrum Team can decide if there any action needed. 

I'd be cautious of using that test as a basis for whether you understand Scrum.  Would you mind saying where you found that test?


08:17 am February 8, 2022

difficulty with accurately estimating product backlog items

is the expectation correct to estimate accurately ?


02:29 pm February 16, 2022

Agile prefers relative estimation to not fall in accurate estimation trap.

PB Items are estimated with relative estimation to estimate based on

V- Volume of work item

C -Complexity

U -Uncertainity

K-Knowledge we have

With new team try to come up with work that whole team can consider as 1 unit.

Once this is agreed upon, team can use modified fibonocci series or in earlier days - its better to use T-Shirt sizing estimation.

As T-Shirt sizing estimation will be a relative estimation where all the candidate work items (conisdered in sprint planning) are compared relative sizes and estimated relatively.

Gradually team can enhance thier estimation capability to estimate based on modified fibonocci series.


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