Shared understanding - Why we size work

I think one area I get the greatest satisfaction as an agile coach is when I see a team really start to understand why we size things (rather than traditional estimating) in agile environments.  When I see the “ah ha” moment and the light bulb goes on it’s always a huge step in both their team formation as well as their understanding of some of the advantages of agile principles and practices.  They really start to understand the agile principle of communication over process.

It’s the discussion that allows us to come to a common size that really counts, not so much the number that we arrive at.  It’s the shared understanding of the business need and, from a lean perspective, what is enough to satisfy the business need and what is overkill.  Sure, having each of these items slotted into like sized piles is helpful for sprint planning, release planning, etc, but to me they are almost side benefits, and not the core benefit.

My favorite example.  Our product owner has asked us to provide a way to get across a waterway.  As team members, you might initially vote this as a 40, believing that we need to build the Golden Gate Bridge over the bay in San Francisco.

But I may vote it as a 2, because I think all we need is a log over a creek.

After we discuss the real business need with our PO, we settle on an 8 since we form a shared idea of building a simple bridge that still meets the business need.   The discussion required to arrive at this number brought out what the business really valued (provide a way for foot traffic to cross the creek) and the constraints involved (make it simple, yet attractive)  We now have a good idea of what done looks like (able to walk across the creek) and how to test it (allow up to 10 people at a time on the bridge)

It’s the power of these discussions that really brings the team into a unified vision of what business problems we are trying to solve, and a shared understanding of how we might solve those problems.  These discussions are what allows us to become more effective and efficient at saying if meeting this business value is bigger than a breadbox.