Talkilla/Estimation Meetings

Estimation Meetings

If you haven't read it already, please read the Talkilla Agile Process overview, especially the section on Estimation.

Estimation meetings are the beginning of the development process. They are primarily used to estimate the complexity of user stories. In doing the estimation, uncertainties, technical issues and other possible problems are uncovered providing feedback to the product team before cards are worked on by engineers.

Format

Each estimation meeting will look at the "Ready for Estimation" column in the Backlog. Ideally, folks will have read through the column before the meeting.

Card Estimation

• For each card, we spend a few minutes discussing the card, resolving any issues if possible.
• Then we'll vote on the card according to the ratings
• If we all agree, the card is marked with the rating
• If we disagree, then we discuss the differences in rating, followed by more estimation cycles

Sometimes issues can't be resolved, and we'll then do one of several things:

• Push the card back to the product team for further detail and/or splitting into multiple cards
• Request a 'spike' card, which is a short card to investigate with some code, or other means, how much work it would be to do the user story, which then feeds back into a future estimation meeting.

Other outcomes are possible, we generally take it on a card-by-card basis.