Effective Strategies for Accurate Project Estimation in Agile Development

Measuring progress in a Software Engineering team happens in many different ways.

Often, the short description of a story leaves a lot of ambiguity about the scope of the change. Even when it is being discussed face to face, it may only be plain to the full implications of taking on the story

Valuable initiatives produce an observable change in someone’s way of working.

Capturing a behavior change makes a story measurable from a business perspective, always opening up a good discussion.

If you have a big chunk of work, identify underlying assumptions and think about the easiest way of proving or disproving them.

Design experiments around those assumptions and turn them into user stories.

The industry’s most common way to measure progress is through story points.

Story points measure effort, not time.

Focusing too much on time will make the team focus on low-value stories to complete the sprint. This is misleading, of course, because the main focus of a delivery team should always be business value.

Working software is the only proof of progress, not any burnout chart.