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The smaller the team (by team I mean everyone in the project not just programmers) the easier the estimation can be done and the more thought you can put into i
by coldcode 7y ago
The smaller the team (by team I mean everyone in the project not just programmers) the easier the estimation can be done and the more thought you can put into it. When you get into projects as big as the two (simultaneous) I am in the more the estimation becomes random guesswork. In one project they defined 1400 or so user stories, a portion of which I had to estimate in less than a day which is basically dice throwing. But this is a huge company, and the ultimate money involved is also huge in both cost and revenue. I wish we could spend more time thinking of it as a journey instead of launching off a cliff.
- jacques_chester 7y agoAt the scale of 1400 stories, using Little's Law as an estimation tool would become tractable. As you proceed through the stories you would have an average latency and throughput. When multiplied these give the total of all stories either in the backlog or in-flight. Then you solve for when that number reaches zero and you have a fairly decent estimate of the 50% completion time. What you couldn't do well is say when particular stories would be completed, or what the 80%/90% etc times would be. You'd need to use something more sophisticated.
- bobm_kite9 7y agoI think I understand Little's Law, but I'm struggling to see how it works here - are you saying the backlog size would be predictable?
- jacques_chester 7y agoMore that since you know the backlog size, you can use figures on either average latency or average throughput to calculate when the backlog will be drained.