What is the Purpose of Estimation?

Firstly we need to remind ourselves why it is we estimate. The main reason we have to estimate is to provide data to the Product Owner (and the business) to understand and manage the release plan. A secondary reason is to help the Team look at its performance by understanding their capacity.

Let's face it, estimation is mostly about planning. From a team perspective, the main benefits of estimation is the discussion that ensues as a result of doing the estimate which helps clarify understanding.

Scrum requires that we provide the Product Owner with good data, that we work to improve the estimates when they do not provide the data required. In other words, when we say “make estimation work” what we mean is that the Product Owner can plan easily using the estimates and velocity we provide to plan a release and make informed business decisions. If the Product Owner cannot make it work, it is up to the Team to help fix the problem perhaps by trying the approaches suggested here, or any other experiment (note - we are really interested in hearing about those experiments as well.)

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