We have to estimate the size of projects for forecasts, for portfolio-related decisions, and to prepare quotations for customers. But how can we reliably estimate a project’s size without identifying and analyzing every single user story? And does it make sense to analyze in so much detail when a substantial portion of the effort is likely to be wasted?
Software sizing is an essential part of estimating our resource needs for a project. In order to forecast time and budget, we need to be able to quantify “what” we are building. This is because the resources required are related to “how much” software is built.
Randomized Branch Sampling (RBS) represents an approach that can enable us to accurately size a prospective project by focusing on just a small portion of the planned tasks. It was developed so an individual only had to count the number of fruit that existed on a limited number of branches of a fruit tree to arrive at a highly reliable estimate of the actual number of fruit that could be harvested from the entire tree. The same technique can be applied to Agile and Lean projects by examining a subset of user stories and tasks across a range of proposed epics in order to estimate total project size.
This session will give attendees practical knowledge on how to use Scrumban Randomized Branch Sampling (RBS) when planning Agile projects. The technique presented will produce accurate results for most projects with relatively little effort.
About the speakers:
Dimitar Bakardzhiev (Presenter) is the Managing Director of Taller Technologies Bulgaria and an expert in driving successful and cost-effective technology development. As a Lean-Kanban University (LKU)-Accredited Kanban Trainer (AKT) and avid, expert Kanban practitioner, Dimitar puts lean principles to work every day when managing complex software projects with a special focus on building innovative, powerful mobile CRM solutions for Oracle CRM On Demand and Siebel CRM users.
Ajay Reddy (Introduction) is the co-founder of ScrumDo.com, Enterprise Agility coach at CodeGenesys, LLC, co-creator of getScrumban.com and author of the upcoming Addison Wesley book Scrumban [R]Evolutions.
