Estimating software projects, features and tasks is not easy. This presentation shows a way to change the focus from "how long is going to take" to "what can I build in xx days"

1. No estimates

2. Capturing
Requirements

3. How do you capture
requirements?

7. Reality always wins

8. Requirements will
change

9. Cone of Uncertainty

10. Sizing
Requirements

11. How do you choose a
size?

12. Task Breakdown

13. Shirt Sizes
(XXL, XL, L, M, S, XS, etc)

14. Throwing dice

15. FDD
Frown Driven Development

16. Magic 8 ball
Two
Months
One
Month

17. User Story Points
Using Fibonacci (1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13 …)

18. Planning poker

19. Discovering
complexity

20. Complexity is
relative

21. Tends to average

22. Can we avoid
estimation?

23. It will take what it
takes?

24. Use Facts

25. Units of work per
week

26. Let’s make each unit
of work…

27. Around the same
size

28. How?

29. Focus on…

30. What can we build
in xxx days
that adds value?

31. NO ESTIMATES!

32. Acceptance Criteria

33. When are we done?

34. Writing Scenarios
Input
Output
Step 1
Step 2
…
Step N

35. Multiple Scenarios

36. Gherkin DSL
Business readable DSL
Flush out requirements
Automated testing
Used by Cucumber, SpecFlow,
jBehave

37. Features
Feature: Listing movies
As a User
I want to list movies
So I can see the contents of the library

38. Scenarios
Scenario: List all movies
Given I'm logged in
And I have (some data loaded)
When I (do some action)
Then I (should see expected results)

39. Writing reviews
Scenario: Write a review for a movie
Given I'm logged in as a Critic
When I write a review for a movie
Then I should see the new review
in the reviews section
for the movie

40. Example II
Scenario: See most recent movies first
Given I'm logged in as a User
When I order the list by release date
Then I should see the movies with the
release date most recent first

41. Guidelines to
write
scenarios

42. ??????
Scenario: Perfect world
Given the application is setup
When I want to use some projects
Then I should be able to load data
And have a great user experience
but no bugs should appear

43. ?????
Scenario: Redirect user
Given a User "dave" with pwd "secret"
And I am not logged in
When I navigate to the home page
And I fill in "Username" with "dave"
And I fill in "Password" with "secret"
And I press “Login"
Then I am redirected to the login form

44. Just right
Scenario: List all projects
Given I'm logged in
And I have some projects stored
When I list the projects
Then I should see all of them

45. Estimating
using scenarios

46. New Functionality
When is the right time to write scenarios?
During Inception?
During Analysis?
During Development?
During QA?

47. Order Matters Not!
Can every feature be independent?

48. Size Matters not!
Can every feature be of the same size?

49. Value matters a lot!
Otherwise why are we building it?

50. Complexity∝ amount
How many scenarios per feature?

51. Complexity ∝ amount
Scenarios
0
1
2
4
5
6
7
Complexity
Simple Medium Complex WTF?

52. Complexity ∝ Clarity
Too many steps

53. Complexity∝Clarity
If scenarios are unclear
then is time to rethink the feature

54. Complexity ∝ Clarity
Takes more than 10 minutes to write

55. Complexity ∝ Clarity
You read it the next day and
have no clue what it means

56. Recipe
Focus on what can be built in X days

57. Recipe
One or two scenarios at most

58. Recipe
Make sure you can implement it in XX
amount of time
(1 or 2 days)

59. Recipe
Find the simplest scenario
that provides value

60. Recipe
Find the FACTS (metrics/speed)
and use it to estimate

61. Recipe
Improve and repeat

62. THANK YOU!

63. The Smartest tool
for agile project
management
http://smartview.io

64. amir@barylko.com
@abarylko
http://bit.ly/abarylkoslides
http://orthocoders.com
http://westerndevs.com