Description
February 8, 2021, 14:00 – 15:30 Eastern time (e.g., New York), UTC-5.
Many software development/delivery teams are using iterative processes such as Scrum or Extreme Programming, or a continuous-flow process like Kanban, that call for periodic short-term planning. Teams that define work items as User Stories often use Story Points as the basis for relative sizing of stories, and they estimate short-term future performance using Story Points as the unit of measure. Others estimate work items in terms of calendar time or ideal time, or use other mechanisms to forecast or estimate their work.
Several methods are available for estimating or forecasting software delivery work, and many teams have difficulty understanding why and how to use each approach. In this session, we’ll consider what information stakeholders and company leadership are looking for when they ask teams to estimate or forecast delivery, what the organizational constraints or inhibiting factors are that make it challenging to provide this information, and how each estimation or forecasting approach applies to various situations.
We’ll also consider the value of predictability in short-term planning for the organization and for the team itself, and how various technical practices and team structures affect planning predictability.
