Gamification of Scrum and Agile activities is something that is seeing huge success.
In the same lines, I have been trying to teach Agile way of working through games and activities. This is a chance I took, at helping my teams understand “Relative Estimation” through a simple activity.
For teams that are used to estimating in hours and days, the term “Relative Estimation” seems near un-perceivable. The challenge was not only to make them understand what Relative estimation meant, but also to help them with sizing things based on the concept of Relative Estimation
So, here’s what I usually do –
I list out the planets of the solar system, and ask teams to arrange them in the order of size. Yes, I know you are thinking this is easy, and more importantly, how is this got to do anything with Relative estimation. Well, unless you are a 5th grader(or one who has a great IQ), you will find it difficult to accurately arrange it.
Yes, we all know what the smallest and the largest planets are, but, teams mostly mess up in the middle. What teams mostly end up doing is – Relative estimation.
Teams mostly start with Pluto as the smallest, and Jupiter as the largest. Most teams get Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars right. But, when it comes to Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, teams are a little confused.
After the exercise, when I ask the teams what went through their minds while arranging the planets, this is what I mostly get to I hear –
We THINK Saturn is the second largest. We Know Mars is bigger than Earth. , so, we had to place Uranus and Neptune in between Mars and Saturn.
This is exactly what I then tell the teams. Identify the smallest and the largest User stories/Epics in order of complexity. Pick up a few more, and see if you can fit them in the same order. Teams can choose to have as many buckets as they want, however, its important to have lesser number of buckets, so that teams do not end up with over-analysis
So, while identifying the Relative size of any user story or Epic, you can use the following factors as a indicative to Rank it – Complexity , Uncertainty and the Magnitude of work
The slides that I use are shared on Slideshare
Deepak Gururaja 