Interactive Estimation by Priority

Technique and presentation by Dennis

Brittonwww.agilevisioning.com

Setup your ‘chart’

Stage the User Stories along the bottom

Have the team get up and estimate story effortNote: The team is only allowed to move the stories up or down to preserve product owner priorities. when they are done placing the stories, have the team do another round where they can move any of them higher or lower than other stories (not left or right), but have them explain why

Draw Grid Lines for quantifying relative estimates

Add numerics or T-Shirt Sizes accordinglyGo from bottom to top asking whether it is 0, effortless, 1 simplest least effort task, 2 twice that, 3 three times that, etc. until all have numbers or the same idea with S,M,L, XL sizes. Allow discussion. This is valuable. someone ought to take notes on the board if possible. Move the same point stories to the same level as their number. Write the effort points on each story

Identify story categories in the four quadrants•Upper right quadrant contains stories that are challenging but important. Definitely something to tackle right away to expose risk early and get a head start on difficult issues.•Lower right quadrant contains stories that are quick and valuable. Some of the more junior team members could grab these and run with them.•Upper left quadrant contains difficult but marginally useful for the sprint. These may not be cost effective to try.•Lower left quadrant contains tempting easy ones which might be better ignored so more resources can be directed elsewhere.

Draw the line according to team capacityGet the number of story points completed from prior sprint. add 10% to it. write it on the board.from right to left , count up story points until you reach that +10% number. "Draw a vertical line just to the left of that last story that fits. Write 'Sprint X' as a title to the section to the right of that line. Allow discussion. Some team members, including product owner, might want to swap out one story for another, split a story into only primary criteria in order to fit another story. In the end it is the product owner's decision what to accept in the sprint and the team's choice of how many points to attempt.