{"id":111,"date":"2017-04-26T17:23:49","date_gmt":"2017-04-26T17:23:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mortaine.com\/?p=111"},"modified":"2017-04-26T17:28:46","modified_gmt":"2017-04-26T17:28:46","slug":"agile-estimating-planning-usergroup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mortaine.com\/index.php\/2017\/04\/26\/agile-estimating-planning-usergroup\/","title":{"rendered":"Can You Get Unicorns? Agile Estimating and Planning at the Las Vegas Agile User Group"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Agile Estimating and Planning was the topic of the first <a href=\"https:\/\/www.meetup.com\/Las-Vegas-Agile-and-Scrum-User-Group\/\">Agile and Scrum User Group<\/a> meeting here in Las Vegas on Monday night, and it was a good one!<\/p>\n<h2>A little club business<\/h2>\n<p>In the last 3\u00a0months, Jim Schiel reached out to users of numerous local IT-related groups to invite them to join this new meetup group. As a result, we are now over 50 members and growing! Our first meeting was April 24th, and had about 8 attendees&#8211; not bad for a first time!\u00a0We started by talking about the group and organization, then did introductions. The group was a wide range, from project managers and scrum masters like me, to developers and IT administrators.\u00a0Slightly more than half were currently unemployed.<\/p>\n<h2>A great presentation<\/h2>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignright wp-image-113\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.mortaine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/unicorn-2007257_640.png?resize=280%2C280\" alt=\"Can you get unicorns?\" width=\"280\" height=\"280\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/>Jim then\u00a0gave a 90-minute\u00a0presentation on Agile estimating and planning. He led an exercise in which we created and sized a backlog for a wedding. The exercise was a bit fun and a bit frustrating. I\u00a0took on the role of an enthusiastic bride (the customer): &#8220;Of course the carriage should be\u00a0pulled by horses. Unless you can get unicorns! Can you get unicorns?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Jim&#8217;s a\u00a0trainer and coach for numerous Agile methodologies, including Scrum. He explained the difference between estimating by &#8220;effort,&#8221; such as work hours or ideal person days,\u00a0versus &#8220;size,&#8221; like story points or t-shirt sizing used in Scrum.<\/p>\n<p>Some useful numbers I wrote down so I wouldn&#8217;t forget them:<\/p>\n<p>When estimating the deliverable date, use the following formula:<\/p>\n<p>backlog size\/velocity\u00a0* a variable\u00a0= the number of iterations to complete the backlog.<\/p>\n<p>This is a common approach, though it doesn&#8217;t really account for changes in the backlog after development has begun. The variable mentioned above is just for the team&#8217;s ability to work\u00a0together:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>If your team has worked together and is already a good, Agile team, with a fairly consistent and known velocity,\u00a0the variable number is about 1.2 (adding 20%).<\/li>\n<li>If your team is experienced-but-learning, multiply by 1.4 (adds 40%).<\/li>\n<li>If your team is new, or they haven&#8217;t done Agile before,\u00a0or there&#8217;s lots of technical debt, multiply by 1.7 or 1.8 (add 70-80%).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>This really highlighted\u00a0the\u00a0importance of a strong team. Jim tried to hammer home that\u00a0an organization&#8217;s process maturity isn&#8217;t its agility&#8211;\u00a0the people\/culture are its agility.<\/p>\n<h2>What&#8217;s next?<\/h2>\n<p>What&#8217;s next for the Agile and Scrum User Group? The next currently scheduled meeting isn&#8217;t till July, but I&#8217;m planning\u00a0a Lean Coffee sometime in May or early June so we don&#8217;t lose momentum.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Agile Estimating and Planning was the topic of the first Agile and Scrum User Group meeting here in Las Vegas on Monday night, and it was a good one! A little club business In the last 3\u00a0months, Jim Schiel reached out to users of numerous local IT-related groups to invite them to join this new &hellip; <span class=\"read-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.mortaine.com\/index.php\/2017\/04\/26\/agile-estimating-planning-usergroup\/\" class=\"more-link\">Read More<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,11],"tags":[12],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8CvWE-1N","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mortaine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mortaine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mortaine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mortaine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mortaine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=111"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.mortaine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":179,"href":"https:\/\/www.mortaine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111\/revisions\/179"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mortaine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mortaine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mortaine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}