Estimating Story Points using Affinity Estimating

2.1

126

197

1:35

2.9

174

881

5:05

Print Cards:

Print Stories and Bugs from VSTS that your team will be estimating, on to cards.

Create Signs:

Write signs on separate pieces of paper, with these labels:

• <— Smaller
• Average
• Larger —>
• XS
• S
• M
• L
• XL

Hint: XS, S, M, L, XL are T Shirt sizes you will use later in the exercise.

Gather Supplies:

• Lots of tabletop tape dispensers
  It will go much faster with more dispensers.  And don’t use the small disposable handheld kind, those will slow you down.
• Lots of multi-colored markers.
• A conference room.
• A big wall.
• A whiteboard.

Prepare Cards:

Spread the Story/Bug cards out on the conference room table and put a piece of tape on the top of each.

Signs as Directions:

Facilitator – Put signs on the wall to group Stories into: 

• <— Smaller
• Average
• Larger —>

Baseline:

Choose several Stories as a baseline.

• 2-3 average
• 2-3 smaller
• 2-3 larger

These will act a baseline to compare other Stories with.

Silent Placement:

Team members select Story/Bug cards from the table that they recognize and tape them on the wall.  

Place on the wall according to these guidelines:

• Place the card you have, near other cards that it has an affinity, or relationship or similarity, with.
  • If the card is smaller than another card on the wall, place it to the left of it.  
  • Or to the right, if it’s larger.
  • Sidebar:  This is where Affinity Estimating gets it’s name.
• Average sized under Average sign.
• Smaller sized to the left.  The smaller they are, the further left.
• Larger sized to the right. The larger they are, the further right.

No discussion should happen yet – this allows this step to be done very quickly.  Hence the name for this step:  Silent Placement

Refine the Size Groupings:

Facilitator now helps the team refine the smaller and larger Story/Bug cards in to more size groups by:

• Asking the team questions about the cards.
• Look for natural groupings, and ask questions to uncover more distinct groups.
• Goal is to divide the cards in to at least 5 distinct size groupings.
• Break <— Smaller and Larger —> in to 2 more groups each = total of 5.
• More than 5 size groupings is OK, but keep it to no more than 7.  This is because too much detail is more difficult to work with on this scale.  Less is more.  Also a level of precision beyond the 5-6 Fibonacci sequence numbers is overkill.
• The next pass explains why.

Active Placement:

• Have everyone stand up and work at the wall.
• Everyone now discuss the cards.
• Each person should review all the cards they placed on the wall.
• Ask your teammates questions.
• Move cards around to new places based on new thinking and ideas.
• Refine their placement in to at least 5 distinct size groupings.

Assign them T Shirt sizes:

Once you have at least 5 distinct size groupings, replace the signs with T Shirt size signs.

• Replace: Average  –  with  –  M
• Replace: <— Smaller  –  with  –  S & XS
• Replace: Larger —>  –  with  –  L & XL

Final Active Placement:

• Have everyone stand up and work at the wall.
• Everyone should do a final review of the card placements.
• More discussion among team members should happen.

Now it’s time to put Numbers on the Whiteboard:

Facilitator should write these Fibonacci sequence numbers on the whiteboard:

1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21

Assign a Number to M – Medium:

• Facilitator asks team which number should be M – medium.
• Point out to team that wherever they put M on the number sequence you wrote on the board, they will need at least 2 on both sides of M.
• IE.  If M = 5, then S = 3 & XS = 2.  Leaving 1 as some room to go smaller in the future.

Assign Numbers to all T Shirt Sizes:

• Write the T Shirt size below each number.
• Using multi-colored markers, mark each size in a different color.
• You will use the color coding to mark the cards, to save time later.

Largest Size that can fit in 1 Sprint:

• Facilitator asks team what is the largest size Story that they can complete in 1 Sprint.
• Draw a line on the board to the right of that size.
• Anything larger than that, must be broken down into smaller Stories, before it can be planning in a Sprint.
• All Stories too large, should be broken down by the team ASAP and there sizes estimated.

Color code the cards:

• Using the unique marker color you used above for each size, put a color mark on each card in each size grouping.
• A simple mark is just fine.
• The color code is used to identify the number in Story Points of each card.

Take Down Cards:

• Take each card off the wall.
• Fold the tape around and stick it to the back of the card.  Otherwise the cards will become a big stuck together mess.
• Stack the cards in each size together.
• Write the number assigned to the size on the top of the stack in the same color of that size.
• Take a photo of the whiteboard, or write it down, to note the T Shirt sizes and numbers assigned to each size, and the color of each.

Data Entry:

• Enter the Story Points in to VSTS for all of the cards.
• Suggest the facilitator ask for volunteers from the team and give each volunteer a stack of 1 size.

Share the Results:

• Facilitator should document and share the results of the workshop.
• It’s especially important to share the Story Pointing Scales decided by the team, so they can use this scale consistently going forward.