Planning Poker Estimation Technique Wideband Delphi

Delphi Estimation Method
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Leave a Comment3 Apr 2018 .. What is Planning Poker? The Planning Poker technique is a variation of the Wideband Delphi poker estimation techniques estimation technique. This technique is used in ..

Planning poker—why and how we estimate

Friday 4 December 2015Wednesday 19 April 2017 Gareth Saunders All the tools you need to become an Agile planning ninja

When creating a plan—whether it be a big project release plan or a smaller two-weeks’ timebox plan—you essentially need to know three things:

Tasks —What are the requirements? What do you need to do?
Size — How big are these tasks compared with one another? How long will these take to complete?
Priorities — Which tasks need to be done first because others depend on them? Which tasks are most important regardless of dependencies?

It’s very much like creating a recipe: assemble the right ingredients, measure them to the correct proportions, and then mix them together in the right order.

In an Agile project the prioritisation of tasks is done by the business. It is their project after all; they have the most information about value, they understand the market, they have an idea of what features should be delivered next. Prioritisation is not a decision to be made by the development team.

The size of each task , however, is something that the development team is qualified to estimate. If I want a new wall built in my garden whose estimate should I trust more: mine (the person who commissions the work) or the builders (who do this job day-in, day-out for a living)?

Jan 21, 2018 The Planning Poker technique is a variation of the Wideband Delphi poker estimation techniques estimation technique. This technique is used in. This technique is used in. Planning poker—why and how we estimate.

When planning, we use a tool called planning poker to help estimate the relative size of tasks.

Planning poker

Planning poker, or Scrum poker, is a very effective, collaborative planning tool that was first defined by James Grenning in 2002, and made popular by Mike Cohn, founder of Mountain Goat Software .

Each estimator takes a set of planning poker cards, consisting of a 0, ½, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 20, 40, 100 and optionally a ? for instances where you simply have no idea), and ‘play’ progresses as follows, the rules are pretty simple:

Read out the next task .
Discuss the task : The task is discussed by those who understand what it’s about, so that the whole team gains clarity about what they are being asked to estimate.
Estimate : Everyone selects a card representing how big they think the task to be. Once everyone has selected, we reveal our score at the same time. This is to prevent other team members’ estimates influencing your own.
Lowest vs highest : If there is not universal consensus, ask whoever scored the lowest and highest why they thought this was.
Re-estimate : Given these new insights everyone re-estimates.
Gain consensus : Once consensus has been gained that score is recorded with the task to which it relates. This consensus can be done by repeatedly re-estimating, but more often in our team if most have scored, say 8, and one member still estimates a 5, then she may simply say that they are happy to go with the rest of the group.

Benefits

Relative

One of the immediate benefits of planning poker is that it allows you to estimate tasks relative to one another . You may not be in a position to know exactly how long something will take to do, but it should always be easier to estimate whether it would take more effort or less effort than a similar task that you have already completed and know how long it took.

Think of it this way, it doesn’t really matter if you measure the length of your desk in metres and centimetres, feet and inches, or even Post-it notes and pencils, so long as everyone on your team is also using the same scale.

Some teams use an arbitrary unit called ‘story points’ where they know the size of one story point, others measure in ideal days. We estimate in ideal hours.

We also take into account how many people we anticipate will be working on the task. So if we think the task will take one hour with three developers then we’d score it as a three. Although it only occurred to me a couple of weeks ago that we also need to build in quality assurance/testing time into our estimates.

One general rule we have is that if a task is scored as a 13 or above then it needs to be broken down into smaller tasks. Large tasks are generally more complex and therefore harder to estimate with any degree of accuracy. Breaking down the task into smaller pieces removes some of this risk.

Equal voice

Another benefit is that this style of estimating gives everyone on the team an equal voice . I remember one of the first times we used planning poker when one particular task was discussed, it involved cleaning up a few directories in our media library. My colleague Steve and I estimated something small, like a 5 or 8. Duncan, who had only been in the job for about six weeks estimated 100.

Why so high, Duncan? Even though he was relatively inexperienced in terms of the job as a whole it turns out he had the most up-to-date experience of our media library, and he reported that it was a right royal mess. It would take a much longer time to sort out than either Steve or I had anticipated.

Equal contribution

Related is the feeling by the whole team that they have all contributed to the plan . And people often feel more committed to a plan that they have had input on. The result is a more dedicated, self-organising team.

Conclusion

We’ve found planning poker to be a very effective tool for estimating the relative size of project tasks. It allows the whole team to understand what work is coming up, and have their say on how simple or complex the tasks are.

It also allows us to chart the velocity of the team from sprint to sprint, which in turns helps us with future planning as it gives us a more accurate idea of how much work we are likely to complete from sprint to sprint.

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Principles of Agile Estimation

Agile estimation techniques are collaborative. All appropriate people are included in the process. For example the whole Scrum team participates in estimating effort of Product Backlog Items. Collaborative techniques are also designed so that it is impossible to blame someone for an incorrect estimate: there is no way to trace who estimated what.

Agile estimation techniques are designed to be fast (-er than traditional techniques) and deliberately trade off accuracy. We are not trying to learn to predict the future… or get better at estimation. Instead, we recognize that estimation is a non-value added activity and minimize it as much as possible.

Most Agile estimation techniques use relative units. This means that we don’t try to estimate dollars or days directly. Instead, we use “points” or even qualitative labels and simply compare the items we are estimating to each other. This takes advantage of the human capacity to compare things to each other and avoids our difficulty in comparing something to an abstract concept (such as dollars or days).

Check out my recent “ Agile Planning in a Nutshell ” article.

What Other Agile Estimation Methods Are There? Please let me know in the comments and feel free to include a link!

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7 Nov 2013 .. This technique is even harder to scale across multiple teams supporting .. Then they estimate these, using planning poker with story points. .. compared to the wildly differing velocities teams of comparable size may have in ..Planning Poker (Scrum Poker Cards): An Agile Estimation and Planning Technique — Software Testing Help Delphi estimation technique exampleWideband Delphi | Planning Poker | Rapid Estimation Techniques | cPrime

Andrew Stellman and Jennifer Greene (2005). Applied Software Project Management . Sebastopol, CA: O'Reilly Media. ISBN 0-596-00948-8 .

Delphi Cost Estimation

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Planning Poker Estimation works really well in agile methodology .
This technique is scalable and estimates are based on team velocity
Planning Poker is also very successful due to the fact that we receive estimates directly from people who are going to work on the task and so is more realistic.
If the Project Manager provides the estimates himself, without consulting the team or finalizing the technical details, it may essentially put the project at risk due to assumptions made, details overlooked etc.
More and more companies are now transitioning towards Agile and using such non-traditional estimation techniques.

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Dr. Kevin Thompson in a demonstration of the wideband delphi and planning poker method to estimation. Learn how to estimate your Agile and conventional projects faster.http://www.cprime.com/training

This is an excerpt from Mike Cohn's Agile Estimating and Planning online training course. For more information or to stream and download the full-length course, go to: https://www.frontrowagile.com/courses...In this video, Mike explains how to play Planning Poker to collaboratively estimate an agile or Scrum team's product backlog. You can earn four PDUs, SEUs and a certificate of completion after successfully completing the full course.

Estimation Techniques in Scrum

January 16, 2014By SCRUMstudy

Out of several estimation techniques involved in Scrum, few are noted below.

1- Wideband Delphi

2- Relative sizing / Story Points.

3- Affinity Estimation.

4- Estimate Range.

Wideband Delphi

Wideband Delphi is a group-based estimation technique for determining how much work is involved and how long it will take to complete. Individuals within a team anonymously provide estimation for each feature, and the initial estimates are plotted on a chart. The team then discusses the factors that influenced their estimates and proceed to a second round of estimation. This process is repeated until the estimates of individuals are close to each other and a consensus for the final estimate can be reached.

Planning poker is one example of a Wideband Delphi technique. It is also important to note that it is the individual input collected by a mechanism that avoids the group thinking. Then the individual inputs are used for a group decision.

Relative Sizing / Story Points.

In addition to being used for estimation cost, story points can also be used for estimating the overall size of a User Story or feature. This approach assigns a story point value based on an overall assessment of the size of a User Story with consideration given to risk, amount of effort required, and level of complexity. This assessment will be conducted by the Scrum Team and a story point value will be assigned. Once an evaluation is done on one User Story in the Prioritized Product Backlog, the Scrum Team can then evaluate other User Stories relative to that first story. For example, a feature with a 2-point story value must be twice as difficult to complete as a feature with a 1-point story; a 3-point story should be three times as difficult to complete as a 1-point story.

Affinity Estimation

Affinity estimation is a technique used to quickly estimate a large number of User Stories. Using sticky notes or index cards or tape, the team places User Storied on a wall or other surface, in order from small to large. For this, each team member begins with a subset or User Stories from the overall Prioritized Product Backlog to place by relative size. This initial placement is done in silence. Once everyone has placed their User Stories on the wall, the team reviews all the placements and may move User Stories around as appropriate. The second part of the exercise involves discussion. Finally, the Product Owner will indicate some sizing categories on the wall. These categories can be small, medium or large, or they may be numbered using story point values to indicate relative size. The team will then move User Stories into these categories as the final step in the process. Some key benefits of this approach are that the process is very transparent, visible to everyone, and is easy to conduct.

Estimate Range

Estimates for projects should be presented in ranges. Precise figures may give an impression of being highly accurate when in fact they may not be. In fact, estimates by definition are understood not to be precisely accurate. Estimate ranges should be based on the level of confidence the team has in each estimate. The range can be narrow when the team is confident and wide when the team is less confident.

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