Retreaded: ThrownEstimate

Retread of post orginally made on 22 Jun 2004

If you're using XP style planning, you need to get rapid consensus
estimates from developers. Throwing the estimates lets you quickly
tell when developers have same similar views on an estimate (so you
can note it and move on) or if there is disagreement (when you need
to talk about the UserStory in more detail.

Here's the basic sequence. The customer puts together the list of
stories that need to estimated. With each story:

The customer briefly describes the stories to the developers

Developers ask clarifying questions about the story. They
shouldn't discuss technical issues about how to implement, just
ask about scope from the customer's point of view.

On the count of three, the developers show fingers to indicate
their estimate of how many NUTs there are in the story. I call
this a thrown estimate because you can use the same style of pacing
throws that you use
for Rock Paper
Scissors..

If most estimates are similar the scribe notes down the
estimate. If you get a significant variation in estimate then you
should discuss the story further - bringing in the technical issues of
how to implement it.

You can use different conventions for how many fingers to
use. One project I've seen uses 1 or 2 fingers to indicate 1 or 2
NUTs and three fingers to indicate the story is too big and needs
splitting up. Another group uses fingers for 1-4 NUTs and five
fingers to indicate it's too large. Notice that it's important to
have a convention to say that a story has a problem and can't be
estimated - most often because it's too big, but also if it can't be
tested or there's some other problem.

Teams using this report that they are able to estimate stories at
a very rapid rate, avoiding much discussion on stories that are
straightforward to estimate and concentrating time on those that are
more problematic. This keeps everyone engaged in the estimating
process. It also helps that it's fun.

reposted on 26 Jun 2014