Practicing agile theory

Here I discuss the curious case of mixing story points and person days and using them synonymously, not understanding what a monumental difference it is, in terms of arriving at a schedule using the two. While the team is using T-Shirt sizing (or planning poker) to come up with a backlog size in Story Points, they are using the words "Story Points" and "Person Days" interchangeably. As a prologue to my previous post https://practicing-agile.blogspot.com/2019/08/when-you-equate-story-points-with-time.html - the objective in this one is to find the answer to the question -  "How does a backlog estimate in terms of Story Points translate to how long will it take for the team to deliver the backlog, given that requirements, technology and a lot of various other factors influencing estimates are bound to change?" In other words, if the backlog size is 120 Story Points, its equivalent to saying that the backlog is worth 120 PDs of work! A derivatio

Agile becomes fragile! When you are "doing" agile (most likely because it's in vogue) but have not come out of the "sequential " SDLC execution syndrome or the traditional waterfall way of thinking and executing a project, you are most likely headed for a disaster! Of many things that may or will go wrong, is the estimation of work . The traditional methods of estimation like function-point analysis helped us answer the question - "how long (or duration) will a piece of work take to complete?". On the contrary, Agile keeps it simple and takes a minimalistic approach to estimation. In my opinion, estimation in agile is no rocket science as long as you are clear with the basics and understand "what story points are" and how to use them. Visit my blog post on story points for an understanding. Story Points vs. Time (Person Days) Mike Cohn shares a mantra that makes estimation easy - " Estimate size, measure velocity, derive