I read several articles on the subject after having a short discussion during class this week with a fellow student (and amazing person!).
#noestimates does not seem to address the rather common difficulty in achieving a consistent, homogenous backlog with deterministic job durations and delay costs in a CAS. The #noestimates solution fails in the same ways that story points can fail. Yin/Yang. Red vs. Blue. Black & White. Whoopee.
I’m all for raising the banner, change, and continuous learning. But please stop making the argument that one is “better” than the other and story points are evil. That hypothesis may only stand under certain circumstances and conditions. The opposite could just as likely be true. How about you work on solutions to the culture problem driving the flag raising ITFP? Root cause, eh! :-()
As Mr. Reinertsen points out:
There are three common mistakes made in setting priorities. Companies (orgs/teams/groups):
- prioritize jobs based on ROI
- handle jobs on a FIFO basis
- use an approach known as Critical Chain
It does not matter how you estimate. To be successful an organization must create an economic decision making framework, considering Cost of Delay, around the estimating or not estimating. Otherwise, you are fooling yourself. Be consistent. Build in learning. Never stop learning. Never stop improving.
references:
Principles of Product Development Flow, pg193, F17 WSJF, Reinertsen
https://ronjeffries.com/xprog/articles/the-noestimates-movement/
#SAFe #RTE
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