Comments on: Not Converging on an Estimate http://henko.net/imperfection/not-converging-on-an-estimate/ Home of a human being and software developer Sun, 27 Nov 2011 18:38:40 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 By: henko.net » People Who Are Smarter Than I Am http://henko.net/imperfection/not-converging-on-an-estimate/comment-page-1/#comment-10692 henko.net » People Who Are Smarter Than I Am Mon, 10 Nov 2008 07:05:44 +0000 http://henko.net/?p=234#comment-10692 <p>[...] Mike Cohns comment on Not Converging on an Estimate: I discussed an adaption of some advice he gave in a book. However, my adaption forced me to ignore other parts of the same advice. He pointed out that there was no problem in actually doing both parts. [...]</p> [...] Mike Cohns comment on Not Converging on an Estimate: I discussed an adaption of some advice he gave in a book. However, my adaption forced me to ignore other parts of the same advice. He pointed out that there was no problem in actually doing both parts. [...]

]]> By: Mike Cohn http://henko.net/imperfection/not-converging-on-an-estimate/comment-page-1/#comment-10420 Mike Cohn Mon, 27 Oct 2008 14:52:15 +0000 http://henko.net/?p=234#comment-10420 <p>Hi Henrik</p> <p>Nice blog posting. I think that teams that don't try to achieve consensus miss a huge opportunity to discuss the work. These discussions are a huge part of the value of a technique like Planning Poker, which is how I encourage teams to do the actual estimating.</p> <p>What I've seen teams do that is a bit more of a hybrid is this: Drive to consensus on the estimate but then use the highest stated number for the high estimate. So, perhaps five people agree that this feature is likely to be 8 days but during the discussion one of us thought 20 days, but was talked down to 8 by making assumptions and hearing clarfications. That item would be listed with an estimate of 8 - 20.</p> <p>Other teams when they do two-point estimating will explicitly estimate the 50% likely number and then the 90% separately so there are two discussions (and consensus on each). I suspect this works better but it takes a bit longer than just using the highest mentioned number as the 90% value.</p> <p>--Mike</p> Hi Henrik

Nice blog posting. I think that teams that don’t try to achieve consensus miss a huge opportunity to discuss the work. These discussions are a huge part of the value of a technique like Planning Poker, which is how I encourage teams to do the actual estimating.

What I’ve seen teams do that is a bit more of a hybrid is this: Drive to consensus on the estimate but then use the highest stated number for the high estimate. So, perhaps five people agree that this feature is likely to be 8 days but during the discussion one of us thought 20 days, but was talked down to 8 by making assumptions and hearing clarfications. That item would be listed with an estimate of 8 – 20.

Other teams when they do two-point estimating will explicitly estimate the 50% likely number and then the 90% separately so there are two discussions (and consensus on each). I suspect this works better but it takes a bit longer than just using the highest mentioned number as the 90% value.

–Mike

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