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We need to quantify it though. Thinking about long term implications and talking about it is good, but that doesn't break us out of the bubble of communicating
by mindvirus 7y ago
We need to quantify it though. Thinking about long term implications and talking about it is good, but that doesn't break us out of the bubble of communicating it to the business. After all, they don't know what a story point is (heck I don't really, and I've been doing this for a while).
As the article points out, management can be short sighted- they want to deliver on their roadmap this quarter or half (because that is what they are paid for).
I don't know what the answer is, I struggle with this. Testing has some promise here: if we can deliver (failing) tests early on that demonstrate progress toward the roadmap, and use those to show progress to the business and help them hedge risk, we can use tests as a forcing function for quality - testable code, especially for business processes, is usually good code.
- kqr 7y agoI sometimes give two estimations in one: up-front cost of development and long term consequences. Could be something like, "8 points + three support cases per week" for making a new feature without fully thinking it through. Or "32 points + misconfigurations every other month" for including a complicated feature that can more easily be abused. Or "We can go with our current best guess, and the effort of that is maybe 2 points + potentially 12 points later if it turns out we were wrong. Contrast this with 6 points to be certain of doing the right thing now." In my experience, this is highly appreciated in environments that take you seriously, listen to you, and understand what "estimation" means,
- gvjddbnvdrbv 7y agoYour competition gave an estimate of 2 points, did the work, got paid and moved on. Now you are supporting the feature...
- kqr 7y agoIf that was the right call, then great! If not, hopefully someone learned from their mistake. If nobody did, I'm probably not interested in that business anyway; it sounds like it is a recurring source of friction.