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Note that we have some Incomplete Pages That Require Work on this site:-)
Note that we have some Incomplete Pages That Require Work on this site:-)
Ever wondered where the story point / relative sizing based estimating approach came from. A lot of the thinking is based on the “Wideband Delphi” estimation method, a consensus-based technique for estimating effort. This, in turn, was derived from the Delphi method which was developed in the 1950-1960s at the RAND Corporation as a forecasting tool. It has since been adapted across many industries to estimate many kinds of tasks, ranging from statistical data collection results to sales and marketing forecasts.
In addition, it turns out there was significant amount of research into doing estimates, since this was considered such a core part of the software development process. The result is that this estimation approach has been validated by that research.
Looking at the approach:
The numbers refer to the following references:
And if you've ever wondered why we use the modified Fibonacci sequence instead of some kind of simple 1 to 10 scale, see Why Progressive Estimation Scale Is So Efficient For Teams.
In addition, this approach leads to:
You will also note that these references are quite old, so there really is no surprise that people continue to learn and experiment with different approaches. The reason I bring this up is that there are alternative approaches out there.