Agile2013

Relative estimation is a big mindshift for many developers that have been doing time estimates for years (and being repeatedly punished for guessing wrong). Deriving a release plan based on velocity (which is based on those relative size estimates) is an even bigger shift for many Product Owners. This session will walk attendees through a series of quick exercises that, after dozens of iterations with real classes, I have found teach relative estimation in a way that gets developers completely out of the business of mentally converting story points to time and back again to story points to derive their estimates. The key is visual grouping, and attendees will work a realistic product backlog through affinity estimation, planning poker, and release forecasting using velocity, with a chance for Q&A about the various techniques and their pros and cons.