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estimation

Interview with Pawel Brodzinski

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  • 5 min read

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

Independent feedback

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

Our summer experiment

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

Estimation meets Cynefin

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

Distribution chart and details of my Monte Carlo simulation

Guesstimate

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

Calibration tests

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  • 5 min read

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

Student’s t-statistic

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  • 4 min read

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

The Signal and the Noise

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