Estimating Episodes

129. Learn how to use story point estimation to estimate the relative size of your Dynamics 365 or Power Platform application's requirements. You'll also learn: How to slice user stories into the right size for estimation and development How to decide on a standard user story for comparing other stories against when estimating How to use affinity estimation or planning poker to estimate the relative size of user stories How to derive the duration that describes how long it'll take to build ...

128. My wife, Natascha, is a faster trail runner than I am. Find out why estimating trail runs in units of time leads to misaligned expectations about how long it'll take for us to run the same trail together. You'll also learn: What story points are Three factors affecting the size of a requirement How to account for Hick's Law and Weber's Law when choosing an estimation scale The two estimation scales commonly used by agile teams The estimation scale my teams use This episode is the sec...

127. Do you really have to estimate the effort of building the Dynamics 365 or Power Platform apps you've been asked to build? If you work for a Microsoft partner, you probably do -- unless you work for a customer who doesn't care how much it costs or how long it takes. Find out how I approach estimation: How much and how long? Why estimates are notoriously inaccurate Estimating time doesn't work Estimating t-shirts doesn't either Estimates, forecasts and commitments This episode is the f...

126. Thanks for all your questions about estimating business applications. In this episode, I tackle four tricky situations when it comes to estimating Dynamics 365 and Power Platform applications. Should we re-estimate items in our backlog after we’re done because they were easier or harder than originally expected? — Tanika If we don’t complete a story by the end of the sprint, should we re-estimate how much work is remaining and split the story points across the sprints in which the work go...

#116. Dani Kahil interviews Andrew Bibby about a pivotal, multi-year Dynamics 365 business transformation project in financial services. Dani Kahil and Andrew Bibby are both Microsoft Business Applications MVPs. Dani is an independent consultant and online trainer specialising in requirements analysis and solution envisioning. Andrew Bibby is a founder of Proximo 3, a Microsoft training and advisory partner based in the UK. Dani and Andrew discuss: How Andrew's client engaged him as an adviso...

#74. Join me with Vasco Duarte who runs Oikosofy a coaching company in Finland and is also behind the Scrum Master Toolbox podcast. Vasco is the author of a fascinating book, #NoEstimates. Vasco and I chat about the challenges of estimating complex business application software, particularly in the CRM and ERP domains, and how the No Estimates movement and the method covered in his book can help business applications teams construct collaborative contracts with their customers and never deliver ...

#55. In this second episode on estimating Microsoft Business Applications we answer your financial sponsor's two favourite questions: How long is it going to take? How much is it going to cost? If you're a Dynamics 365 or Power Platform project manager, business analyst, solution architect, pre-sales consultant, developer, or in business development, you'll find out how to answer those key questions in this in-depth episode. For full show notes and transcript, visit https://customery.com/004...

#53. If you're building Microsoft Dynamics 365, Power Apps, Power BI, Power Automate or Power Virtual Agent applications, when and how should you be estimating your requirements, releases and applications? Check out part 2, Estimating how long and how much, to discover more about forecasting how long it's going to take and how much it's going to cost. For full show notes and transcription, visit: https://customery.com/002 We need to estimate our requirements for two reasons: time and money We...

#40. There are two ways of handling bugs in Scrum: Bug Estimators treat bugs like any other product backlog item. They write a card, estimate it, add it to the product backlog, prioritise it and work on it during a future sprint. Bug Zappers try and avoid writing cards for bugs and they never estimate them. Instead, they try and zap bugs as soon as they are discovered. Mike Cohn is a Bug Estimator but Mitch Lacey is a Bug Zapper (so is almost every other Scrum trainer and team). Listen in to...

#28. Shawn Tabor wants to know whether to estimate project effort in days or story points. Aren't they the same thing? I've used four ways of estimating effort in my Dynamics 365 projects: Counting cards Days T-shirts Story points Estimating in days is an absolute estimation method, whereas t-shirts and story points are both relative estimation methods. This means that we compare the relative size of items using a scale, rather than trying to estimate the absolute size. Story point estima...

#11. Estimating product backlog items using planning poker is the topic for this episode. The benefits of planning poker: gain a shared understanding of the work, bring diverse perspectives to the estimation process and estimate the work as we learn about the Dynamics 365 system. Who plays planning poker: the role of Scrum team developers, the product owner and proxy product owners in estimation. When to play planning poker during each sprint: sprint planning and storytime. What to play plann...

#8. Dermot and Neil answer questions submitted by podcast listeners about: Estimating chores to reduce technical debt (Todd Mercer). Prioritizing items with dependencies and the principle of emergent design (Alan Rachid). Whether business analysts are part of the development team or not (Greta Sharples). Planning agile projects, especially in the sales cycle (Jeffry van de Vuurst). You can submit your questions by tweeting @customery or clicking on the Send Voicemail button anywhere on the ...