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3 Questions for Easier, Less Stressful Project Estimates In agile development, the idea of precise estimates is unrealistic. But estimates are needed to inform decision-makers about whether it's worth solving a problem as it is currently understood. It sounds counterintuitive, but instead of asking for one estimate of cost and schedule, ask for three. Here's why it's more useful. |
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Deception and Estimation: How We Fool Ourselves Research suggests that humans are biased, not-very-rational decision-makers. We believe we see things clearly when the evidence shows otherwise. Throw in a big dose of optimism, and it's easy to see how estimating software projects can be problematic. Our best hope is to construct diverse groups with varied viewpoints. |
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Test Estimation in the Age of Agile and DevOps Estimating testing in the contemporary world of agile and DevOps demands some new rules. Gone are the days of using project planning software and work breakdown structures to define and estimate each category of work and the associated tasks. Here are some modern rules, prerequisites, and advice for test estimation. |
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Refine Your Product Backlog Continuously to Improve Flow One way to address poorly defined product backlog items is to spend time refining the items as you go. Refining the backlog continuously helps the team deliver consistently and can lead to shorter planning meetings at the start of the sprint. It can even help improve reliability, velocity, and the quality of work. |
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Why Should We Be Agile? A Slack Takeover with Griffin Jones Thought leaders from the software community are taking over the TechWell Hub for a day to answer questions and engage in conversations. Agile coach and consultant Griffin Jones presided over the first Slack takeover, which led to some insightful discussions. Here are some of the questions and takeaways from the Hub. |
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A Musical Metaphor for Agile Estimation Many explanations of relative sizing in agile estimation fail to capture the mix of knowledge, skill, and effort involved in completing a task. Learning to play a song seems to capture the core ideas of estimation. With a metaphor, it is easier to come up with baselines to estimate against for your own agile sizing. |
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4 Takeaways from Agile + DevOps East 2018 With a week full of sessions, tutorials, training classes, and events, the Agile + DevOps East software conference had plenty of takeaways. Here are four highlights, including discussions about agile estimation, finding your ideal job, some challenges to advancing test automation, and leading self-organizing teams. |
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5 Factors That Could Be Making Your Project Estimates Go Wrong Why do our estimates for a project or a testing phase so often turn out wrong? Whatever causes underestimation, we clearly do not learn from experience, as we repeatedly make estimation errors, despite feedback showing previous errors. It’s a chronic problem. What could be driving these errors? Here are five factors. |
