Estimation

First of all, being a CSM myself, let me reassure you, that Scrum Alliance and Scrum.org don't have different "teachings" of Scrum. So borrowing from the Scrum Alliance isn't treason, if you're trained by Scrum.org and Vice Versa ;-)

For both organisations, the ultimate source of what is and isn't Scrum is the Scrum Guide. I'd say the key difference between both organisations is how Scrum is trained and how people get certified.

If you look in the Scrum Guide, you will note that is does mandate PBIs be estimated. It does not mandate how this is achieved. So you are correct in assuming that Estimation Technique is beyond the scope of Scrum itself. There's a ton of estimation techniques out there. Being not personally familiar with SAFE, I cannot speak to whether or not some specific estimation technique is part of SAFE.

In the end, estimation isn't about Scrum, and not even necessarily about agile. Estimating the work to be done is essential to any development effort, regardless of methodology or framework. And while it is true that agile has a different approach to estimating than waterfall, both need to estimate.

So, in short: I'm not speaking for Scrum.org, but I do not believe that reading a book by Mike Cohn means you're deviating from Scrum.org "teachings". ;-)

I have read several of his books and I found them insightful and especially Agile Estimating and Planning helps me on a daily basis.

BTW, Ken Schwaber, founder of Scrum.org was also a co-founder of the Scrum Alliance ;-)

P.S.: I just noticed, Scrum.org even recommends this book for PSPO I preparation: https://www.scrum.org/resources/suggested-reading-professional-scrum-pr…

I assume Mona has SAFe = Scaled Agile Framework (www.scaledagileframework.com) in mind.

As far as I know, the techniques for relative estimations are the same, be it Scrum by Scrum.org, Scrum Inc, Scrum Alliance, or SAFe or Nexus or LeSS.

Estimating Product Backlog Items has two purposes (at least):

1. It helps the Development Team to determine what they take on in a Sprint
2. It helps the Product Owner to forecast the contents of releases

Use a technique that is simple, quick and accurate enough. Adapt it as the Scrum Team matures. Saying that it would even not contradict Scrum to invent you own method provided is transparent to be be inspected and adapted.

My view is that the main purpose of Team estimating is having a common understanding of the work to be done.

I don't care if an item is estimated 3 or 21 by the team, but I'm looking for the alignment of estimates among team members.

Thank you Julian for re-enforcing Scrum.org principles and I'm certainly new to Agile/Scrum (and its a buzz word here in Australia)

Gerard - yes I did mean from SAFE Agile point of view - having completed training and acquired certification - I was introduced to poker card method of estimation.

in traditional projects as a project coordinator we estimated effort number of days developers needed to complete a functionality against their daily rate for the cost. Oliver - in traditional projects we did not estimate among team members but on individual basis.

Hence I'm looking to learn more on Agile estimation through reading and through actual experience.

The important thing to understand about estimation in Scrum is that its purpose is just to help a Development Team decide how much work it can take on.

In Scrum, estimates should never be used as a proxy for value. Hence story points are never "delivered" or "earned", for example. The value is to be found in each increment which is actually provided.

hi everyone, i am new to this forum, i am PhD scholar, i am working on user story based effort estimation model. and now i need a data set of completed projects. i am stuck now. can anybody help me with data set of completed projects with actual cost? i will be very thankful