https://blog.boochtek.com/categories/estimation/Recent content in Estimation on BoochTek, LLCHugoen-usSun, 23 Mar 2014 23:02:28 +0000https://blog.boochtek.com/posts/agile-estimation/Sun, 23 Mar 2014 23:02:28 +0000https://blog.boochtek.com/posts/agile-estimation/<p>I don&rsquo;t believe that estimation should be part of any Agile practice.</p> <p>One of our managers recently mentioned that we hadn&rsquo;t met the &ldquo;contract&rdquo; that we had &ldquo;committed&rdquo; to in our last iteration. This was complete nonsense, because A) we hadn&rsquo;t made any such commitments, and B) we completed many more story points than the previous iterations (and without inflating story points).</p> <p><img alt="estimates-as-deadlines" loading="lazy" src="https://blog.boochtek.com/images/estimates-as-deadlines.png"></p> <p>But her language made me come to several realizations. First and foremost, estimates are contracts. Sure, they&rsquo;re not <strong>supposed</strong> to be treated as commitments, but they almost always are. And what does the <a href="http://agilemanifesto.org/">Agile Manifesto</a> say about this? It says that we should value customer collaboration over contract negotiation, and responding to change over following a plan. So it&rsquo;s pretty clear that treating estimates as commitments is completely counter to the Agile values.</p>