I’m proud to be able to share a recording of our #NoEstimates meetup with Vasco Duarte that took place in December directly at idealo. Vasco provided 10+1 new principles for software development and gave an inspiring speech and Q&A on the topic of abandoning estimations.

Big thanks again to VASCO for your inspiration.

 

Have fun watching it!

The 10+1 principles on your short list

  1. Trust your process, or change your process
  2. Shorten the feedback cycle 
    • all agile principles are narrowing down on shortening the feedback cycle
    • shorten the cycle, measure it and then you don’t need estimates
    • cost/duration = essential complication x accidental complication (caused by technical debt, rushing, bugs,…) … the complexity of our software system increases with changes done in the system by accumulating accidental complication (and this changes the story point meaning for a story – a 2 point story today has another meaning than in one month … so story points are useless)
    • why are we estimating effort if stories spend most of their time in queues that is not reflected by effort in any way … useless estimation again … just take the queue time
  3. Believe the data, not the estimates
  4. Use alternatives to estimates-driven decision making
    • Being better at estimates does not being better at what we do.
    • Test for value – spent time on that instead of spending it on estimating something that delivers no value
  5. Test for value first, then test for functionality
    • look for data to compare a new project too
  6. Estimation is waste, reduce its impact on our business
  7. Measure progress only with validated, running software
  8. The system where you work has predictable outputs, learn to understand the system
    • just counting the number of stories delivered is enough (if the are small enough)
  9. Don’t bet your company on on your track record methods use method with a proven track record …  aka hope is a bad management strategy
  10. The transformation starts with you…
  11. #NoProjects

More about #NoEstimates

Read the brilliant #NoEstimates book by Vasco Duarte – a must for being up to date regarding agility