SEE ALSO:
- Effort Estimation
- Iteration Velocity
- Initial Estimate
- Actual Time Spent vs Estimated Effort comparison report
- Effort
- How Effort is calculated for User Stories and other work items
- How Effort is calculated for high-level scopes of work: Features, Epics, Projects, Releases, Sprints, Team Iterations
- How to limit total effort when estimations are made
Brief summary of this article:
Estimation template is a special experimental configuration of board view in Targetprocess. It displays work items as cards distributed by columns according to the estimated Effort. Drag-n-drop action for cards is supported on this view. It allows to update Developer Effort for your work items one by one and in batches.
Only Effort assigned to the Developer role is supported by this configuration at the moment. Roles with other names are not supported. As a workaround please either rename role for Assignments to Developer (if it is acceptable to modify your process) or use other methods of updating effort such as Batch Actions.
Configuration of the View
To create Estimation view from scratch, in the left navigation menu please click + Create > Board.
Create the view from the template named Estimation.
Targetprocess creates for you a new board view with User Stories selected as cards. Effort field is pre-selected for vertical lanes. This is the key difference of the view from any other ones.
Only User Stories, Tasks, and Bugs are supported by Estimation Board View mode. Any other entity types are incompatible with Effort lane. Horizontal swimlanes for assigned People are also not supported by this view at the moment.
How the view works
The view groups cards under columns according to Developer Role Effort values. By default columns represent first numbers from Fibonacci sequence such as 0, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, and ∞.
When a current Effort value for a card is not equal to one of the displayed numbers, the card is assigned to the next greater column. Say, user stories with 6 pt effort are assigned to 8 pt column. Cards with zero estimation are put to 0 column. Any card with value greater than the last displayed number is assigned to the special column denoted by ∞ sign.
The view uses Effort assigned to a User Story itself only. Sum of Effort of nested Tasks is not processed.
Set custom values for displayed Effort columns
You can set your own values for the Effort lanes instead of a fixed sequence of Fibonacci numbers. Just type the effort values comma separated into the filter for vertical Effort lane. Like on the figure below:
Drag-n-drop Estimation
You can move cards one by one or in batches to any column on the view. The system updates Effort value assigned to Developer role in all cards using the number displayed in the column header. When you move cards to the last ∞ column the system sets the Effort as 10 times greater than the number displayed in previous column. Say when last displayed number is 21 and you move a card to ∞, its Effort becomes equal to 210 pt. This behavior cannot be customized at the moment.
Points Effort Units Support
In short, Points are relative abstract effort units that works great for experienced agile teams. Points are a relative measure of user story size. Usually they are used with discrete scale. For example: 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 20. This scale means that a 5 point story has nearly twice the complexity of a 3 point story, no more. Estimation with points is easier, since you estimate-by-compare: “We’ll give this story 2 points because it seems like it’s twice as big as that 1-point story and about half as big as that 4-point story”.
It is possible to switch planning units from hours to points and vice versa.
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