Estimating and Planning Agile User Stories
A 59 Seconds Agile Training Video
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Introduction to Estimating User Stories
A 59 Seconds Agile Article
This article provides an ‘Introduction into Estimating User Stories’ and looks to discuss what a user story is and the methods of estimation and planning within Agile projects.
Affinity Estimation
It is a good idea to use a wall or whiteboard with sticky notes to map out the user story points, starting with the stories scoring 1 on the left and the highest scoring stories on the right.
The base story and its score is now used in affinity estimation, which is a rapid technique used when the number of user stories to estimate is large. If you were to take each story and assess it, the team would probably still be estimating right through the night.
In affinity estimation, you pick a story and decide whether it is simpler or harder than the base story, which takes only a few moments to decide. You can refine the estimation by triangulation, where you compare the complexity of the story being estimated against two or more stories in the same range. It should take only a few hours to work through all the user stories this way.
Resist the temptation to use software to record the decisions until you have finished, working with sticky notes and pen or pencil is more creative and uses right-brain thinking.
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Estimating User Stories
A 59 Seconds Agile Video Animation
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User Stories Applied
A 59 Seconds Agile Book Review
User Stories Applied by Mike Cohn is one of our favourite books on Agile User Stories. The book starts with an overview into user stories, and details what a user story is and the different aspects of them. He then discusses how to go about writing a user story, and provides details of the INVEST criteria that can be used to determine if the story is meeting all of its objectives. Next Mike gives an in depth discussion of who user stories are written for and where to begin when gathering the details for them. The book then discusses acceptance testing user stories, including how to go about specifying these criteria and the responsibilities of the development team and customers during this process.
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What is Agile?
A 59 Seconds Agile Infographic
