Agile Estimation Card Decks
Agile Estimation Decks (Planning Poker):
Improve the Speed & Reliability of Your Estimates
TweetIn Agile & Scrum projects, teams must estimate and plan the velocity of each sprint. One major technique of Agile Planning is Agile Estimation.
Estimating work is difficult to do well, and difficult to do quickly. Our estimation process leverages your team’s expertise to produce quick and accurate results. By using these estimation decks, we eliminate the problem of expert bias, and ensure that your team produces the best possible results!
In Scrum, the Team's velocity has to be estimated prior to the Sprint. The most common estimation technique is " Planning Poker," a voting approach designed to avoid influence bias.
See our e-Learning class on estimation for a demonstration of this technique!
How It Works
- Each estimator selects a set of cards.
- Facilitator reads item to be estimated, and moderates a brief discussion to clarify details.
- Facilitator calls for estimates. Each estimator places estimate face down, hiding the value.
- Facilitator calls for vote, and all estimators turn over cards at the same time.
- If all cards agree, their value is recorded as the estimate.
- Otherwise, facilitator asks high and low estimators to explain their reasoning, and moderates a brief discussion to clarify issues.
- Repeat 3-6 until estimates converge.
Buy 5 decks and take our Rapid Estimation Online Course for Free!
PLANNING POKER® is a reg. trademark of Mountain Goat Software, LLC
eLearning Ondemand
Scrum & Agile Essentials (1 Hour Online Training):
eLearning Online Course. Add to Cart & Download the Course Today!
Interest in the Scrum Agile process framework is exploding as companies discover that Scrum enables them to manage software projects with greater reliability and improve responsiveness to customers. This class introduces the skills that project managers and team leaders need to perform the basic steps of a Scrum process for software development. This course provides an introduction to the basic practices and skills required to make a Scrum project successful.
This online on-demand course provides lecture and quizzes plus individual support for follow-up questions, which will be answered through our course forum and individual support during normal business hours, Monday-Friday 8:00am-5:00pm Pacific Time (US).
This eLearning online on-demand course requires Adobe Flash Player 10. Download it here.
To apply the 1 PDUs earned from our Agile & Scrum eLearning Course, please follow the process in the link below:
http://www.cprime.com/about/PDU.html
cPrime Training Center Introduction to Scrum for Project Managers PDU Information
Provider number: 2925
Activity Number: 070501
Activity Name: Introduction to Scrum for Project Managers
What you will get from this course
- 90 day access to our Introduction to Scrum for Project Managers eLearning course.
- Earn 1 PDU of course credit (PMI)
- Learn how Scrum practices relate to project management fundamentals
- Learn the essentials of Scrum as a software development process
- Learn the three Scrum roles, three Scrum meetings, and three Scrum artifacts
- Project Managers and team leads learn basic planning, tracking, and management skills
- Product Managers learn how to develop and prioritize requirements
- Team members learn how to estimate and break down work
IDC research indicates that 70+% of software development failures are due to poor gathering and management of requirements, while a 2008 study by QSMA Associates showed that projects organized for agile development deliver products 37% faster to market, with 16% greater productivity, than industry averages.
The desire for fewer failures and speedier success is driving the rapid adoption of the Scrum process framework, and the increasing need for trained people who can make agile projects successful. Scrum is designed from the start to improve responsiveness to customer needs, reduce wastage, and reduce time to market.
This course provides a firm grounding in the basic practices and skills required to make a Scrum project successful.
More Course Details
Audience
- Project Managers, Program Managers, PMO Directors and staff who manage projects and processes
- Software development, QA, and Product Management personnel who will do the hands-on work in a Scrum process
- Executives interested in integrating Scrum processes with the business to improve product development
- Anyone who wants to know how Scrum really works
Instructor
Kevin Thompson, Ph.D., has a doctorate in Physics from Princeton University, and extensive background in managing software development projects. He specializes in training individuals, teams, and organizations in agile development. Dr. Thompson helps companies make the challenging transition to agile development by working with development teams and business stakeholders to identify their needs, define the right process for the business, determine the steps needed to implement the process, and work through the steps successfully.
Dr. Thompson has Project Management Professional (PMP), Scrum Master (CSM), and Scrum Practitioner (CSP) certifications.
Why us?
Agile Team Definition Template
Agile Team Definition Template:
Improve Your Agile Team's Sprint Estimation and Organization.
The amount of work an Agile Team can perform in a Sprint must be known in order to plan the Sprint effectively. You can use this template to estimate the Team’s capacity for work for a particular Sprint.
First enter the Sprint duration, and the hours the whole Team spends in standard meetings and activities, to compute the best-case “free time” in which Team Members can be working on Sprint Backlog Items. Then provide each Team Member’s hours off per Sprint, and percentage availability to work on Sprint Backlog items. The template will then compute the Team’s total capacity for work in Points, or Person-Days, and the effective number of full-time employees (Net Team Resources).
When you have estimated the Team’s capacity, and estimated the size of requirements (Stories, Defects) in the Product Backlog, you can then determine which items will fit in this Sprint’s Backlog.
Agile Scrum Terms and Glossary
Agile & Scrum Glossary:
Glossary of all Scrum & Agile Terms & Definitions
Download our Scrum & Agile Glossary for over 60 terms and definitions to help you grasp concepts of the Agile Methodology and Scrum Development Methods. Use it to study for exams such as the Scrum Master Certification or the PMI's Agile Practitioner examination or just to become familiar with the processes and terms associated with Scrum and Agile methodologies. Find tricks to help you remember Scrum processes, such as criteria for User Stories or how Planning Poker is played.
Agile and Scrum Terms Covered
Agile Methods
Agile Planning
Agile Modeling
Agile Estimation Techniques
Defect
Epic
Planning Poker
Scrum Meetings
Scrum Process
and Many More!
Burndown Chart Template
Burndown Chart Template
Scrum Tools
At the start of a Sprint, the team breaks down each item in the Sprint backlog into a set of tasks, with a time estimate for each, such that executing the tasks results in a completed implementation. During the Sprint, the team member who completes a particular task marks that task as complete. Plotting the amount of uncompleted task work against time from the start of the Sprint produces a Burndown Chart
A Burndown Chart is essentially the same thing as the "Estimate to Complete" chart familiar to project managers.
A “burndown chart” is a bar or line chart showing, each day, the amount of this Sprint’s planned work that remains to be done. The ideal progress is indicated by a diagonal line, trending down to zero on the last day, against which the actual state is compared.
The burndown chart, for example, is just the graph of remaining planned work versus time, which should trend down to zero on the last day of the Sprint. The Sprint Backlog is the set of requirements (“Stories,” in Scrum) planned for implementation in a Sprint.
Download our Burnup Chart Template too.
Cumulative Flow Diagram (Burnup Chart)
Cumulative Flow Diagram (Burnup Chart)
Scrum Tools
Much as a Burndown Chart shows work remaining, a Burnup Chart or Cumulative Flow Diagram (CFD) shows work accomplished versus time. While any of these metrics can be plotted for any span of time, Burndown charts are most commonly plotted for individual Sprints, while Burnup charts and CFDs are usually be plotted for Release cycles that contain multiple Sprints.
Burnup charts and Cumulative Flow diagrams are very similar--so similar, in fact, that they can usually be
considered the same thing in practical terms.
1)A Burnup chart shows progress towards a goal
2)A Cumulative Flow diagram shows the distribution of all work items (e.g., Stories) across various
states, over time.
For example, a Release cycle may have a concept of scope. A Burnup chart shows our progress towards the goal of completing that scope. Changes in Scope or estimates during the Release cycle cause fluctuations in the scope line, as shown in the example. At the same time, we show progress towards the goal by charting the amount of work completed to date. Ideally, the amount of completed work will rise to the scope line by the end of the Release cycle.
The Cumulative Flow diagram is very similar. It shows how much of our work (i.e., the effort associated with User Stories) is in different states, such as Completed or In Progress. In the example below, the Total and Completed curves shows the Release scope and Burnup of completed work, while the In Progress curve shows how much work is associated with Stories currently in development. Aside from formatting, the only difference between the standard Burnup and Cumulative Flow diagrams is that the latter adds a curve to show how much of the work is currently in progress.
Download our Burndown Chart Template too.
Rapid Estimation
Rapid Estimation for Agile and Conventional Projects
(1 Hour Online Training):
Add to Cart & Download the Course Today!
The ability to estimate time and effort is critical for any project. The purpose of this course is to teach you how to provide good estimates for your projects, quickly, using best practices in expert estimation.
In this course, we show how uncertainty limits our ability to make accurate estimates. We explain how uncertainty is related to scope, and accumulates over time. We discover that uncertainty imposes fundamental limits on our ability to produce reliable estimates, and design an estimation strategy that focuses on quick, practical results.
In Scrum, the Team's velocity has to be estimated prior to the Sprint. The most common estimation technique is "Planning Poker," a voting approach designed to avoid influence bias. Learn how to use this technique in our Rapid Estimation eLearning course!
This online on-demand course provides lecture and quizzes plus individual support for follow-up questions, which will be answered during normal business hours, Monday-Friday 8:00am-5:00pm Pacific Time (US).
These rapid estimation techniques are widely used in the software industry, especially for Agile and Scrum projects, but are useful for projects in any industry.
This eLearning online on-demand course requires Adobe Flash Player 10. Download it here.
To apply the 1 PDUs earned from our Rapid Estimation eLearning Course, please follow the process in the link below:
http://www.cprime.com/about/PDU.html
cPrime Training Center Rapid Estimation PDU Information
Provider number: 2925
Activity Number: 070501
Activity Name: Rapid Estimation
What you will get from this course
- 90 day access to our Rapid Estimation eLearning course
- Earn 1 PDU of course credit (PMI)
- Learn how uncertainty limits estimations and affects schedules
- Learn the the history of group-based expert-estimation strategies
- Delphi
- Wideband Delphi
- Instructions for rapid estimation sessions, and an example
IDC research indicates that 70+% of software development failures are due to poor gathering and management of requirements, while a 2008 study by QSMA Associates showed that projects organized for agile development deliver products 37% faster to market, with 16% greater productivity, than industry averages.
The desire for fewer failures and speedier success is driving the rapid adoption of the Scrum process framework, and the increasing need for trained people who can make agile projects successful. Scrum is designed from the start to improve responsiveness to customer needs, reduce wastage, and reduce time to market.
This course provides a firm grounding in the basic practices and skills required to make a Scrum project successful.
More Course Details
Audience
- Project Managers, Program Managers, and ScrumMasters who needs estimates for project work
Instructor
Kevin Thompson, Ph.D., has a doctorate in Physics from Princeton University, and extensive background in managing software development projects. He specializes in training individuals, teams, and organizations in agile development. Dr. Thompson helps companies make the challenging transition to agile development by working with development teams and business stakeholders to identify their needs, define the right process for the business, determine the steps needed to implement the process, and work through the steps successfully.
Dr. Thompson has Project Management Professional (PMP), Scrum Master (CSM), and Scrum Practitioner (CSP) certifications.
Why us?
Scrum Product Owner Role Cheat Sheet
Scrum Product Owner Role Cheat Sheet
Learn Your Daily Tasks as a Scrum Product Owner
Learn Your Daily Tasks as a Scrum Product Owner
The Product Owner Cheat Sheet was created by our Sr. Scrum Coach, Kevin Thompson, who wanted to clearly break down the daily tasks expected of this critical Agile role. Learn what steps you should take throughout the day and at specific meetings as a Scrum Product Owner.
Tasks Include:
- Action Items to be completed Daily
- Steps Before the Sprint Planning
- Facilitating the Sprint Planning Meeting
- Reviewing the Sprint Meeting
Check out our ScrumMaster Role Cheat Sheet and our Scrum Team Role Cheat Sheet
Scrum Team Role Cheat Sheet
Scrum Team Role Cheat Sheet
Learn Your Daily Tasks as a Scrum Team Member
Learn Your Daily Tasks as a Scrum Team Member
The Scrum Team Role Cheat Sheet was created by our Sr. Scrum Coach, Kevin Thompson, who wanted to clearly break down the daily tasks expected of this critical Agile role. Learn what steps you should take throughout the day and at specific meetings as a Scrum Team Member.
Tasks Include:
- Action Items to be completed Daily
- Steps Before the Sprint Planning
- Facilitating the Sprint Planning Meeting
- Reviewing the Sprint Meeting
Check out our ScrumMaster Role Cheat Sheet and our Scrum Product Owner Role Cheat Sheet
ScrumMaster Role Cheat Sheet
ScrumMaster Role Cheat Sheet
Learn Your Daily Tasks as a ScrumMaster
Learn Your Daily Tasks as a ScrumMaster
The Scrum Master Cheat Sheet was created by our Sr. Scrum Coach, Kevin Thompson, who wanted to clearly break down the daily tasks expected of this critical Agile role. Learn what steps you should take throughout the day and at specific meetings as a ScrumMaster.
Tasks Include:
- Action Items to be completed Daily
- Steps Before the Sprint Planning
- Facilitating the Sprint Planning Meeting
- Reviewing the Sprint Meeting
- Facilitating the Retrospective Meeting
Check out our Scrum Product Owner Role Cheat Sheet and our Scrum Team Role Cheat Sheet
