Estimation

Does every item on your teams backlog have the same value to the business? “We need everything in the spec…tick tock…we don’t need that…that can wait…this can be simpler…oh wait I forgot what this is!” Neil Killick hit the nail on the head for me when he said “a backlog is just a list of ideas” and like all ideas, some are better than others. Think about the backlog on your current project, is it just a waterfall style requirements document in disguise?

While researching for my estimation talk at the .NET User Groups in Sydney and Canberra I kept being reminded of the same ritual that keeps occurring in most Agile teams time and time again. It occurs so often and is so pervasive that people have almost accepted it as “the way it is”.