Teaching Story Points and Estimation

[Karolina Pytlarczyk]

Hello,

I am looking for good resources/games I can use to teach my teams how to use Story Points and estimate. The concept is not new to them but there is a lot of confusion of what is what.

How did you approach that subject? 

Looking forward to hearing your recommendations. 

Thanks,

Karolina

[Pierre Neis]

Hi

They are a couple of games addressing this, such as:

- How long does it take to write my name from Henrik Kniberg

- Ball Point game from Boris Gloger incl. the online version

Pierre NEIS, CAC5  agile² GmbH Co-founder of #play14 Agile Org Coach & Consultant Gaisbergstrasse 41 | D-69115 Heidelberg ✉︎: pierr...@agilesqr.com ☎︎: +49 160 998 724 49 Online Booking:: https://neis.youcanbook.me     Author of The New Normal : AO concepts and patterns of 21-st century agile organizations. Buy here

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[Karin Dames]

Hi Karolina,

I would recommend just using hand signs or cards for the following 3 states rather than a game :

- Too big to fit into one sprint

- Can be done within a sprint or less

- No idea

There's a short article about this that I can't find now but this is essentially why you want to estimate. I find that size doesn't really make such a big difference, it's rather the count of stories that indicates what the team will commit to it not.

So I recommend to spend more time with the PO to size the stories correctly than teach the team how to estimate better.

Thanks,

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[Alexey Korsun Questoria]

I think this one will suit 

https://www.tastycupcakes.org/2016/06/paint-the-story-point/

Also take a look at:

https://agilelearninglabs.com/2012/05/how-to-play-the-team-estimation-game/

and google

Planning Poker

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[Yves Hanoulle]

On top of the other games  (except the ball point Game, Pierrre, what is the link with estimation? , for me that is about  improvement)

I alos like the xp game. 

yet the website where you can download the game seems yto have a problem

https://www.agilebelgium.be/xpgame/

In this game, people have to estimate remade stories and then in a second part execute the stores (funny games)

and then. thye get more stories for the next iteration which. they also have to estimate

it takes 3 hours, yet it's very useful for people to actually learn about estimation (and all kind of side effects in agility)

y

yves

Op ma 21 dec. 2020 om 17:29 schreef Alexey Korsun Questoria <kors...@gmail.com>:

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Yves Hanoulle 

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[Hernan Sartorelli]

Hi Karolina,

This game has worked for me:

  https://agilecomplexificationinverter.blogspot.com/2010/11/agile-story-estimation-via-dog-grooming.html

Best

[Richard Kasperowski]

So many responses - how beautiful!

I'll add a couple more ideas. I use these to teach what I call whole-team relative-size estimating:

• Doggy Estimating
  
• Animal Estimating
  

I have creative commons online versions of them available at https://kasperowski.com/your-remote-team-actually-can-be-awesome/. I precede these activities with learning activities on Definition of Done & Ready.

Enjoy!

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[George Dinwiddie]

Since you mention Planning Poker, take a look at James Grenning's advice
starting at slide 60 of
https://wingman-sw.com/slides/Beyond-Planning-Poker-v1r1.key.pdf Some of
the later slides could be used as a game.

- George

On 12/21/20 11:29 AM, Alexey Korsun Questoria wrote:
> I think this one will suit
> https://www.tastycupcakes.org/2016/06/paint-the-story-point/
> <https://www.tastycupcakes.org/2016/06/paint-the-story-point/>
>
> Also take a look at:
> https://agilelearninglabs.com/2012/05/how-to-play-the-team-estimation-game/
> <https://agilelearninglabs.com/2012/05/how-to-play-the-team-estimation-game/>
>
> and google
> Planning Poker
>
> On Mon, Dec 21, 2020 at 7:02 PM 'Karolina Pytlarczyk' via AgileGames
> <agile...@googlegroups.com <mailto:agile...@googlegroups.com>> wrote:
>
> Hello,
>
> I am looking for good resources/games I can use to teach my teams
> how to use Story Points and estimate. The concept is not new to them
> but there is a lot of confusion of what is what.
>
> How did you approach that subject?
>
> Looking forward to hearing your recommendations.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Karolina
>

--

----------------------------------------------------------------------
* George Dinwiddie * http://blog.gdinwiddie.com
Software Development http://www.idiacomputing.com
Consultant and Coach https://pragprog.com/titles/gdestimate/
----------------------------------------------------------------------

[Pierre Neis]

@Yves Hanoulle The online version of the ball point games has an estimation part making the game more interesting.

Pierre NEIS, CAC5  agile² GmbH Co-founder of #play14 Agile Org Coach & Consultant Gaisbergstrasse 41 | D-69115 Heidelberg ✉︎: pierr...@agilesqr.com ☎︎: +49 160 998 724 49 Online Booking:: https://neis.youcanbook.me     Author of The New Normal : AO concepts and patterns of 21-st century agile organizations. Buy here

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[Rose Abbl]

IF you are trying to teach relative sizing, how about dogs or zoo animals?  You can also use youor local city scape for size of bldgs.

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[alio...@gmail.com]

Richard – these are great; so are the other activities you have posted on your site! Cool stuff 😊

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[Karolina Pytlarczyk]

Thank you so much for all the replies. 

I m so excited to start checking out all your recommendations!

Karin - I agree on this. Already established that this PO stories are too complex and too many acceptance criteria are cramped into one User Story. 

Any recommendations on how to work with PO on making Stories smaller? 

[Yves Hanoulle]

There are many ways to slice stories

one of the think things I like to go back to are slice among product dimensions

as described by Ellen Gottesdiener & Mary Gorman in https://www.discovertodeliver.com/index.php

I think at this moment the e-book is free on the website 

Op di 22 dec. 2020 om 10:22 schreef 'Karolina Pytlarczyk' via AgileGames <agile...@googlegroups.com>:

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[Karolina Pytlarczyk]

Thank you Yves. Yes the ebook is free on the website. 

Karolina

[Karin Dames]

Hi Karolina,

The easiest way is as Yves suggests slicing the stories.  I didn't look at his response yet in detail, but what I like to use (as PO) is to start story creation driven by the team, rather than the PO.  Use a simple 2 x 2 matrix with the one axis measuring the pains and the other axis measuring the effort and combine this with the Goldilocks approach of estimation namely too big, too small, or just right to fit into a single sprint. 

1. PO present a story or epic  (or sprint goal) which hasn't yet been broken into more granular stories.

2. Team spends 3 minutes breaking down the features on sticky notes prompted by a question "What needs to be done to deliver this?". Only focus on goals (why) and let the team drive the how. 

3. Ask them to plot each sticky with a short explanation on the grid to indicate the level of effort (i.e. how much time will be required) and pains (how difficult will it be to implement). 

4. PO uses this as input into story creation. Quick wins will be low pain, low effort tasks thus they will tend to be smaller stories .  High effort items need to be a separate story.  High pain needs to be discussed further or totally removed.

For existing stories, simply spend some time with the PO to analyse stories that were too big.  You'll only need to go into detail once or twice in my experience.

Have fun!

K

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[George Dinwiddie]

Karolina,

On 12/22/20 4:21 AM, 'Karolina Pytlarczyk' via AgileGames wrote:
> Thank you so much for all the replies.
>
> I m so excited to start checking out all your recommendations!
>
> Karin - I agree on this. Already established that this PO stories are
> too complex and too many acceptance criteria are cramped into one User
> Story.
>
> Any recommendations on how to work with PO on making Stories smaller?

Here are a number of ways to split user stories, including my favorite,
by acceptance scenario.
http://blog.gdinwiddie.com/2011/05/01/splitting-user-stories/

- George