Body-scanner estimation

9 out of 10 coaches agree: Estimating is not about the numbers, but about the dialogue.
Even though, many teams find themselves discussing a meager difference in story points - often to the point of frustrated sighs - while the technical details are long clarified.

Today, I have been listening to an explanation of story point estimation. The team was just discussing a list of criteria to judge stories by, and I couldn’t help but think: “What if we just cut to the dialogue instead of dealing with points, and used the criteria to encourage it?”

That thought led to a quasi-algorithmic way of estimating, quickly dubbed “Body scanner estimation” by my colleague Ilja Preuß.

How to play

Discussing the story itself, and answer any questions.
Answer all of the following questions with either Yes or No.
- Inside/Outside
  - Do we need to pull support or input from outside the team?
  - Does it affect outside systems?
  - Do we need to share knowledge about the results?
  - Does it need management approval?
- Knowledge/Skill
  - Does it need specialized knowledge? (Or can any of us do it?)
  - Is this story the first of its kind for our team?
  - Is it very time consuming?
  - Is it annoying to complete?
- Technical
  - Do we have technical debt in the vincinity?
  - Does the change ripple throughout our system?
  - Do we need to set up testing infrastructure?
  - Do we need to set up build infrastructure?
Now, count the number of “Yes” and add 1 as the base cost.
Round the result to the nearest number from Fibonacci’s sequence to get your estimation.
Sanity check the result.

This method of estimation gives teams a handrail to work with, with questions to spark further thought and discussion.

I yet to try Body scanner estimation, so I am eager to hear of your results. Do the questions make sense to you? Did you add some of your own?
More importantly, though, did you come up with a fresh way of estimating lately? I’d love to hear from you.