Lean Thinking applied to Estimating

Here are some questions that you may have heard: Does your user care whether a feature will take 2 days or 20 days? Or perhaps, Does the stakeholder care whether you size it as 2 Points or 20 Points? If your answer is no to either of these questions, then you have your answer – estimation can be viewed as a waste and therefore, the goal would be to reduce the time spent on estimation over time. Lean thinking tells us that any activity that doesn’t add value to the ultimate product is non-value. Those identified non-value activities are then gradually reduced and eventually, eliminated, through continuous improvement.

We have all heard about Six Sigma DMAIC phases:

• Define.
• Measure.
• Analyze.
• Improve.
• Control.

Those phases are typically used to identify process wastes and weaknesses. These techniques may be relatively sophisticated, and probably most often utilized by larger organizations, however, what if we took a number of those phases and applied them at the team level, specifically around user stories and estimation.

Going back to the earlier questions, it was determined that the act of creating estimates might be considered wasteful. In my experience with Lean Thinking, a good starting point is identifying and eliminating waste. This is the beauty of Agile, the Scrum or Kanban Teams can measure, analyze, and improve over time to understand better and gain the ability to break their work down into user stories that are roughly the same size. Consider it as people waiting in line, the user stories will start to follow the same principle.

By removing variation from estimation processes, fewer wasteful conversations around pointing inherently result. A reduction in those conversations can, in turn, help eliminate waste from the elaboration process:

• user stories are now being discussed in a manner of is this story right-sized
• fewer conversations result in reducing waste that are generated during the estimation process
  • For instance, the time and energy associated between trying to work out if the user story should be a 2 or a 3 are eliminated

As you ponder on this notion, keep in mind there are a few critical metrics to help you fill the gaps that you thought estimating user stories was providing you with. For example, the usage of Cycle Time, and Throughput reports can be used to optimize the software development process and make informed decisions. In summary, we should consider using more Lean Thinking throughout the process and maybe that means gradually moving away from estimation.