Estimates slow you down, and offer little in return.
Forget estimation. All you need to do is determine what your next step should be, and then just start the work.
Estimation takes up as much time as you give it. If you have ten minutes you can gauge the tasks, or stories: this will take longer, that’s easier. If you have ten days, then you can be more specific, on why and how one will take longer.
Estimates, no matter how long you take to do them, will still probably be wrong. That is ok. Estimates are another word for ‘educated guess’. That is their role: to provide a range of possible answers, based on what is known at the time.
This is also the clue, as to why they should be skipped. We don’t know everything when we make them. We learn so much while completing the stories and tasks, that we should focus on that instead.
Just start with a thin slice to make it work
Start with a thin slice of functionality to get it out there for feedback. Then apply the feedback, and add another thin slice to extend the functionality. Keep doing this until you achieve your goal, or find you’ve done enough. Maybe some of the parts you thought you might need, are not needed after all.
You have now saved yourself work. You can throw those associated tasks away, and move onto new stories. This is one of the little mentioned gains from this approach: the value of not doing work means you can start other work sooner.
Teach people how to prioritise the work and skip estimates
Teach your people the issues around estimates. Teach them they do not provide the control they think they’re getting with estimates.
Combine this with the motorcade method, and you’ll find that you accomplish more of your goals sooner. Combine this too with trunk-based-development and pairing or mobbing, and you’re doing well.
This post is part of a project pulling together my materials and ideas about Teaching Team Collaboration: the Human-Side of Software Development for software development to students.
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The ideas above are from my book 101+ Ideas to Improve Team Collaboration, which covers all of these little things that students can do to improve their collaboration. Also available via Kindle.