A common issue software developers face, especially through the use of the Waterfall model, is inaccurate shipment dates. Most 21-month waterfall software projects do not get done in 21 months, and they seldom meet the needs of users in the way everyone envisioned upfront.
Utilizing an agile methodology forces teams to complete iterations of the software during two-week sprints. At the end of each sprint, the product is in a usable state, including all completed functionality to date. At any time, business leaders can decide to ship with fewer features than originally outlined because they’re consistently receiving a functional, working version of their product, allowing them the ability to put the software in front of users whenever they feel the product is viable enough.
In this presentation, delivered to a group of software developers and project managers at Full Stack Toronto, Ascendle Founder & CEO Dave Todaro walks step-by-step through agile estimating techniques one can use to understand the size of a project and how long it will take to complete.
Discover how agile estimating allows your team to quickly create predictable and accurate estimates and forecast completion dates based on how fast a team has been moving. Additionally, viewers will learn how user stories and following a disciplined agile methodology leverages your teams’ ability to consistently ship software on time. Lastly, this presentation covers how to deal with changes in scope and priority while always being able to give management accurate completion dates.
Learning Objectives
- Understand how user stories, story points, planning poker, and velocity work together to provide predictable schedule estimates.
- Learn techniques you can immediately apply to your projects to estimate how fast your team will go, both before they start and as they’re getting ramped up.
- Learn about the cone of uncertainty and how to apply its concepts to present a larger range of estimated completion timeframes early in the project, and narrow that range as the project continues.
