Aha... Playing Card at office....Interesting...
Playing Planning Poker also gave me a different experience. As a developer who
sit in front of a computer every day, I enjoyed the relief I got to stay away
from my desktop.
It's difficult to give estimations for software
tasks accurately. It's more difficult to finish development tasks to the
estimated time. The situation becomes more serious when the development
methodology is traditional like waterfall model. In that case BA creates
Requirement document, Architect design the system, Tech lead do the estimation
and finally the developer(who was neglected at all above important scenarios)
is going to implement the system. Is it fare to expect everything properly to
be done on time by the developer in this situation? My answer is NO. BA create
SRS and who can guarantee that developer grab everything what BA means? Tech
lead gives the estimation to the tasks which comes to his mind and depending on
his knowledge about the technology. Can't there be few important points or
tasks that he missed? Can the technical knowledge of all developers in same
level? Also who can guess developer use the same approach which was on tech
lead's mind when he do the estimation. When consider all those things and some
other non mentioned negative points, I really impressed with agile estimation
methodology - Planning Poker.
It's just like a game among the project team on
estimation process. Since all team members are participated to the process, all
ideas are considered. A big advantage is developer get chances to know the real
requirement at estimation process. since senior people are participating to the
process it's a good chance to juniors to learn.
I'm not going to explain planning poker process
here. If you are interested about knowing you can find lot of details from
internet. Few links are given below.
