Estimating Workshop
Description:
We estimate product backlog items so that product owners can better prioritize the product backlog and teams can predict how much they’ll deliver by given dates. Story points—abstract, relative measures of effort—can lead to more accurate plans, but many teams struggle with them at first. Our estimating workshop is tailored to meet the needs of the one to three participating teams. A typical workshop begins with an educational section devoted to topics selected during a pre-course call. Common topics include:
- Understanding the subtle but critical relationship between story points and time
- Learning the four factors that determine an estimate
- Establishing a baseline that can be used for all later estimates
- Triangulating estimates to improve accuracy
- Estimating with Planning Poker® and Affinity Estimation
This workshop is perfect for:
- Teams that need to improve their ability to accurately predict what can be delivered when
- Teams suffering from different understandings of what a story point is
- Teams that want to provide estimates and plans the organization can trust
At the end of this session, teams will understand what story points are and how to use them to estimate more accurately. They will also estimate some of their actual product backlog items—and those estimated items can be used as a baseline for future estimates.
Topics:
The goal of an estimating workshop is for participants to gain practical experience by estimating their real product backlog items.
That’s why we provide a pre-workshop Zoom meeting with a Mountain Goat Software agile mentor and one or more of your key team members. We learn what your team needs, and then generally begin the workshop with an educational session to explain story points or correct misconceptions about them. The educational content may also be adjusted during the workshop if appropriate.
Once everyone understands story points and how to estimate them, your mentor will facilitate estimating actual product backlog items provided by team members.
The workshop will conclude with recommendations participants can follow in future estimating sessions.
