Body scanner estimation

9 out of 10 coaches agree: Estimating is not about the numbers, but about the dialogue.

Even though, many teams find themselves discussing a meager difference in story points - often to the point of frustrated sighs - while the technical details are long clarified.

Today, I have been listening to an explanation of story point estimation. The team was just discussing a list of criteria to judge stories by, and I couldn't help but think: "What if we just cut to the dialogue instead of dealing with points, and used the criteria to encourage it?"

That thought led to a quasi-algorithmic way of estimating, quickly dubbed "Body scanner estimation" by my colleague Ilja Preuß (@ipreuss on twitter).

How to play

1. Discussing the story itself, and answer any questions.
2. Answer all of the following questions with either Yes or No.

• Inside/Outside
• Do we need to pull support or input from outside the team?
• Does it affect outside systems?
• Do we need to share knowledge about the results?
• Does it need management approval?
• Knowledge/Skill
• Does it need specialized knowledge? (Or can any of us do it?)
• Is this story the first of its kind for our team?
• Is it very time consuming?
• Is it annoying to complete?
• Technical
• Do we have technical debt in the vincinity?
• Does the change ripple throughout our system?
• Do we need to set up testing infrastructure?
• Do we need to set up build infrastructure?

3. Now, count the number of "Yes" and add 1 as the base cost.

4. Round the result to the nearest number from Fibonacci's sequence to get your estimation.

5. Sanity check the result.

This method of estimation gives teams a handrail to work with, with questions to spark further thought and discussion.

I yet to try Body scanner estimation, so I am eager to hear of your results. Do the questions make sense to you? Did you add some of your own?

More importantly, though, did you come up with a fresh way of estimating lately? 

Let us know in the comments.

A template to communicate intent

In a corporate environment, teams face many different stakeholders.

Despite of best efforts, team members often have trouble judging requests for what they are actually worth, and tend to react to apparent urgency instead of actual value.

A team lead I recently met found himself in the very same situation, and prompted me for advice. In our conversation, we found out that in his particular case, the issue was partly about communication: the team members didn't know the teams goals, and so they had little to go against.

However, knowing that goal would only get them so far, because things are rarely cut clearly - a request may be out of scope for the team, but fully aligned with the division goal.

The template

Shortly after, I came up with a template to cover three levels of goals and intent:

We will [achieve the team goal],
in order to [achieve the division's goal]
so that the company can [achieve the company's goal].

For example:
"We will ensure the performance of the mainframe
in order to enable the free flow of data
so that Skynet always remains one step ahead of the resistance."

How to apply it

Facing fresh input, this enables team members to think on their feet and look beyond the team's immediate goals, judging issues not only by what their team lead told them, but also by the larger objectives.

This mirrors the military concept of commander's intent, where doctrine says that the aim, purpose and implications of an operation have to be understood two echelons down - something that can hardly be achieved in a single sentence.

By that measure, just filling in the blanks makes for a nice poster, but leaves half the work undone: The actual act of face-to-face communication, where the team lead informs his colleagues about the three levels and their implications - once to make them clear, and once again whenever they change.

Obviously, a dialogue like this requires knowledge of the higher level's intent - but that is hardly a bad thing, since communication goals in a clear and concise fashion is part of proper leadership.

By my assessment, this template works best when the team has an overarching goal or mission that keeps constant for at least some weeks. With small adjustments, though, you could easily use the template for short term objectives like Sprint goals in a Scrum process.

What do you think of the template? What do you do to communicate management intent to your teams? Please tell me in the comments.