I have always tracked the
remaining effort to complete an engineering task in ideal
hours rather than ideal days. However, the current project I'm
working on is using real days as the unit. The switch back to real
time from ideal time is consistent with Kent Beck's latest approach
to estimation. Regardless of whether ideal or real time is used, I
prefer tracking the remaining effort in hours and not days.
My development style is test-driven but i have a 'track' action at
the end of my test-code-refactor cycle. Within a disaggregated user
story, I approach each engineering task by formulating a number of
code-and-test goals that build on one another to evolve the task to
completion. When I attain each goal I record my effort and
re-assess the remaining effort to get the task completed in my
tracking data (I use
V1:Scrum ). My goals are small enough that, on
average, they take me between 30 minutes and 2 hours to achieve.
Therefore, tracking this frequently and in hours generates more
accurate data from which to draw my future empirical estimates.
The engineering tasks and associated tracking data are private to
the team and are not part of management reporting. I report
progress to management in story points.
Tuesday, 4 October 2005
Track remaining effort in hours not days
Posted by Simon Baker - Permalink
