As regulars will know, we have been discussing estimating and forecasting quite a lot over the last few years. There are some marvellous books out there but one thing we found absent was a straightforward, practical review of the various techniques used for estimation and forecasting. So, we decided to… Read More »NEW estimating and forecasting workshop
This is the second in our new series of interviews interesting people (sometimes loosely) related to our agile and lean world. This week is with Pawel Brodzinski who is a Leader of Lunar Logic, persistent experimenter, whiteboard junkie, Lean and Agile coach, prolific blogger. S&K: Explain what you do in… Read More »Interview with Pawel Brodzinski
I’m always on the lookout for ways of getting better engagement, from planning sessions to retrospectives, project kick-offs to project wrap-ups, workshops to meetups. How can you get independent thoughts that aren’t influenced by that loud/experienced/dominating participant? One tool that I experienced recently (which was being used to get feedback… Read More »Independent feedback
If you’re a regular to scrumandkanban.co.uk, you’ll know that James and I have been talking about estimation and forecasting quite a bit. We’ve also run a few experiments on the topic. Two books in particular have raised interesting ideas. Firstly, Surowiecki’s The Wisdom of Crowds talked about how crowds can beat… Read More »Our summer experiment
Question: Which provides a better estimate: Planning Poker or an ‘expert’? Many teams would answer that question by saying Planning Poker is always better than an expert’s estimates. We’ve been told it’s the case so many times, that few question it. Truth is, an expert estimate is sometimes more appropriate than an estimate… Read More »Estimation meets Cynefin
In my summary of Monte Carlo Simulators (May 2015), I said that they were good because they grant the use of ranges and allow you to see how changing the inputs affects the project; but the biggest problem was that they can take quite a bit of time to set up. Well, Guesstimate has… Read More »Guesstimate
How to improve on a guess Guessing (aka intuition or expert judgement) is probably the most common method of estimating that we use, but also the most inaccurate. Most people fall into the trap of giving a single answer when asked for an estimate. Don’t. Instead, offer a minimum (lower bound) and… Read More »Calibration tests
Story points and velocity are probably the most well known tools for estimation in Agile environments. They are the basis for predictability with Scrum. To begin with, we should be clear on what a story point is. Most people reading this will have heard at least one definition, and probably more… Read More »Story Points & Velocity (with Planning Poker)
Introduction In 1908, a guy at Guinness found a way to measure which types of barley produced the best beer-brewing yields: he called it the “t-statistic”. However, because Guinness was paranoid about giving away trade secrets, he had to publish his ideas under the pseudonym “Student”. Although we now know… Read More »Student’s t-statistic
How do you fancy reading 450 pages on earthquakes, the spreading of diseases, climate change and terrorism? Quite. I groaned too. But Nate Silver’s The Signal and the Noise: The Art and Science of Prediction is a page-turner. He manages to mix history with a variety of topics in a… Read More »The Signal and the Noise
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