The Impact of Poor Estimating and How to Fix It

Running Scrum by-the-book for three months, the team was continually failing to meet its delivery commitments. As a result, trust between the business managers and the team degraded almost to a point-of-no-return. Even holding bi-weekly retrospectives, the team could not pinpoint the problems causing their inability to release iterations on time. Mitch Lacey was asked to assist the team in finding the root causes of the problems. He analyzed multiple aspects of the project-from individual work items to planning meetings. Multiple issues were identified, but one thing stood out above all others-the estimation process they used had caused the team to miss its deadlines again and again. Mitch discusses the estimation problems the team was having, how they were fixed, and the resulting improvements in customer satisfaction value delivered. He presents new concepts, ideas, and techniques to help you improve your estimating practices and outlines the benefits of employing collaboration tools in the process.