If estimating is a core activity of traditional project management, Zuzana “Zuzi” Šochová explains to us in this article that it is not used by advanced Agile and Scrum teams. Instead, the focus should be on being more reactive to changes and responsive to feedback. We are realizing that Agile is not about plans, but planning as a continuous activity. Author: Zuzana “Zuzi” Šochová, http://sochova.cz/ There is almost no class where no one would ask me about estimations. So why estimations are not part of Scrum? Let’s start with a bit of context. The whole idea of agile estimation comes from Extreme Programming and the early days of agile where tools like Story points, Velocity, Planning Poker, Burndown, T-shirt sizing, used to be very popular. However, if you look at current state of the art of Agile and Scrum teams, they are not using those techniques very often anymore. Estimations were always core part of any project management, where we believed we know what needs to be done, so the whole problem is not about WHAT but HOW FAST. Therefore, tracking the velocity, showing the burndown and estimating is very useful in such predictable environments where there is only little unknown. So when people shift to their first agile project, they very often still have the same mindset – we know what needs to be done so let’s create a backlog, estimate individual backlog items, and track how fast we are delivering it. That’s the world where estimates, Story Points, Burndown [...]
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