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Agile Product Owner: How long do you think this task will take?

Me: Probably 13 points.

APO: That is too many can you break it down into separate tasks?

Me: Sure its probably an 8 and an 8. Since i need to work on them sequentially and one depends on the other, the second task will take longer if i need to make changes after the first one is merged.

~ Turned 104 (8 tasks * 13) points into 128 (16 tasks * 8 points) points.

A 13 represents a whole 2 week sprint.
An 8 represents a week and a half.
We cannot fit 2 8 point tasks in the same sprint, so now it takes 2 whole sprints to complete 2, 8 point tasks.
We have no smaller tickets so we don't work for the rest of the sprint.

Anyone else been here?

Comments
  • 1
    Self sabotage 🤷‍♂️
  • 1
    Another way to look at it is that the manager protected you. A 13 point task estimation could indikate the task ticket is monolothic and the estimation might not be accurate. Splitting into smaller more granularly estimated tasks will likely be more precise. People can't effecticely reason about high numbers. That's one of the reasons why the SPs are traditionally given in a fibonnachi sequence, to accomodate for the human logarithmic thinking. But even then the estinations tend to break down with high values.

    This also protects the devs from under-estimating hard to estimate tasks by too much. It's always better to overdeliver than not to deliver
  • 4
    "A 13 represents a whole 2 week sprint. An 8 represents a week and a half."

    🤣 Oh it's so laughable to see these insane systems people make up just to make story points abstract. With 13 points it would be 1.3 points per workday. With 8 points it's 1.0 or 1.1 point per workday.

    Did someone enforce the Fibonacci numbers cause you had already bought Planning Poker card decks or configured your ticket system to only accept those numbers?
  • 1
    that's what happens when management reads the word "agile", but fails to understand the meaning of the word "agile"
  • 1
    cool really
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