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> break everything up into smaller chunks. It gives you clearly defined guardrails This is only true if management respects the estimates. In my experience, th

> break everything up into smaller chunks. It gives you clearly defined guardrails This is only true if management respects the estimates. In my experience, they do not understand why Fibonacci or t-shirt sizing, etc. are used. They mentally convert the points to some "X days" and then beat you in the head with it. They want to micromanage and they do not understand they are building software. You can't break certain tasks down further and you can't parallelize many tasks. You can bring up Fred Brooks but it's a hopeless cause. They will never get it. Then as you inch towards their arbitrary deadline (that they tell no one, by the way, because it's better the developers don't know about deadlines until the last fucking minute because "agile" and not "waterfall") they suddenly act shocked that 9 women really can't make a baby in one month. But I digress.

wsc981 4y ago
At the end, those complexity number end up representing some time estimates anyway. Cause you will get the velocity graph, showing how much points have been completed this sprint and how it compares to previous sprints. The graph is expected to stay somewhat level or increase as the team efficiency increases. It will decrease when members are away on holiday. If your team capacity stays equal and last sprint your team completed 20 story points, it’s kinda expected the next sprint another ~20 story points are completed. So in that case 20 story points will represent about 2 weeks of work for the full team. I also think for many people complexity translates into time needed to finish work. A more complex task will naturally take more time to complete than a simple task. So from my point of view, it’s fair (if after a couple of sprints) a product owner might get an idea that 1 point is equal to -say- half a day of work. PS: I am not a product owner and not a big fan of ”Agile”. I think daily stand-ups might be overkill in many situations (in my current remote team it’s more like a weekly stand-up) and I generally hate retrospectives. I just want to get shit done (which is luckily the practice we have in my current team). We do have a task board, but we don’t do the whole assigning points stuff. And I am mostly free to pick-up any task I feel like working on. This is much more agile to me than “Agile”.
- Aeolun 4y ago
  That’s generally true for that specific team in that configuration, but as soon as you start plucking people off, and adding other people to the team everything is up in the air again. It’s also a bad habit to rely on it.
  - and0 4y ago
    Yeah, my last gig had high turnover (not a coincidence with the dysfunction) and it made it particularly apparent that the estimates were a waste of time, but we kept on trucking.
quanticle 4y ago
They mentally convert the points to some "X days" and then beat you in the head with it. That's actually why I really dislike Fibonacci estimation. If we just estimated days or hours, then I could say, "Okay, this is going to take me until Wednesday," my manager would reply with, "Wednesday? It's going to take that long?" and then we could have a discussion about why it's going to take so long. Or, worst case, manager says, "quanticle, I really need this to be done by Tuesday," and I know I'm going to be staying late until it's done. But with Fibonacci numbers, it's like, I estimate a 3, manager nods and agrees that this task is a 3, and then it turns out that when I said 3, I meant that it'd take until Wednesday, but manager thought that a 3 point task would be done by Tuesday, and now manager is mad at me, and I don't know why. The old way sucked, but at least it sucked in an up-front and transparent way.
- LanceH 4y ago
  When you vote in Fibonacci and it's really simple, do you vote a 1, or 1?
  - majikandy 4y ago
    I prefer 1 or 0, do or do not. The rest of the sequence is meaningless. If you are truly in a position where two different features will bring the company £5mil of revenue and one is a 3 and one is a 13, just do both, no need to prioritise the 3.
- and0 4y ago
  For me the most absurd conversation around Fibonacci estimation is the burndown (etc) charts and group estimates.. you can't add non-linear values and expect the sum to mean anything! I've had managers fight over how the upcoming sprint is doable because it has around as many total points as the last, ignoring that they've defined the individual five-pointers as being significantly more effort than five individual one-pointers. And they either fail to grasp the issue or deflect when it's pointed out. Agile is a cudgel.
  - quanticle 4y ago

wsc981 4y ago

At the end, those complexity number end up representing some time estimates anyway. Cause you will get the velocity graph, showing how much points have been completed this sprint and how it compares to previous sprints. The graph is expected to stay somewhat level or increase as the team efficiency increases. It will decrease when members are away on holiday. If your team capacity stays equal and last sprint your team completed 20 story points, it’s kinda expected the next sprint another ~20 story points are completed. So in that case 20 story points will represent about 2 weeks of work for the full team. I also think for many people complexity translates into time needed to finish work. A more complex task will naturally take more time to complete than a simple task. So from my point of view, it’s fair (if after a couple of sprints) a product owner might get an idea that 1 point is equal to -say- half a day of work. PS: I am not a product owner and not a big fan of ”Agile”. I think daily stand-ups might be overkill in many situations (in my current remote team it’s more like a weekly stand-up) and I generally hate retrospectives. I just want to get shit done (which is luckily the practice we have in my current team). We do have a task board, but we don’t do the whole assigning points stuff. And I am mostly free to pick-up any task I feel like working on. This is much more agile to me than “Agile”.

Aeolun 4y ago
That’s generally true for that specific team in that configuration, but as soon as you start plucking people off, and adding other people to the team everything is up in the air again. It’s also a bad habit to rely on it.
- and0 4y ago
  Yeah, my last gig had high turnover (not a coincidence with the dysfunction) and it made it particularly apparent that the estimates were a waste of time, but we kept on trucking.

quanticle 4y ago

They mentally convert the points to some "X days" and then beat you in the head with it. That's actually why I really dislike Fibonacci estimation. If we just estimated days or hours, then I could say, "Okay, this is going to take me until Wednesday," my manager would reply with, "Wednesday? It's going to take that long?" and then we could have a discussion about why it's going to take so long. Or, worst case, manager says, "quanticle, I really need this to be done by Tuesday," and I know I'm going to be staying late until it's done. But with Fibonacci numbers, it's like, I estimate a 3, manager nods and agrees that this task is a 3, and then it turns out that when I said 3, I meant that it'd take until Wednesday, but manager thought that a 3 point task would be done by Tuesday, and now manager is mad at me, and I don't know why. The old way sucked, but at least it sucked in an up-front and transparent way.

LanceH 4y ago
When you vote in Fibonacci and it's really simple, do you vote a 1, or 1?
- majikandy 4y ago
  I prefer 1 or 0, do or do not. The rest of the sequence is meaningless. If you are truly in a position where two different features will bring the company £5mil of revenue and one is a 3 and one is a 13, just do both, no need to prioritise the 3.
and0 4y ago
For me the most absurd conversation around Fibonacci estimation is the burndown (etc) charts and group estimates.. you can't add non-linear values and expect the sum to mean anything! I've had managers fight over how the upcoming sprint is doable because it has around as many total points as the last, ignoring that they've defined the individual five-pointers as being significantly more effort than five individual one-pointers. And they either fail to grasp the issue or deflect when it's pointed out. Agile is a cudgel.
- quanticle 4y ago