What is an agile estimate? What are the common pitfalls?

In software development , the usual “estimation” includes a quantitative evaluation of the work required to perform a given development task; this is usually expressed in terms of duration (hour / day) or estimated unit (story point). The purpose is to consolidate a number of such individual estimates in order to obtain an indication of the overall duration, work or cost of the software project.

Common pitfalls of agile estimation

Even in an agile community, people will find many different schools of thought about evaluating theory and practice. However, some of the typical mistakes that agile teams often encounter when they conduct agile assessments , and these common pitfalls, have gained broad consensus:

1. Estimates must contain “uncertainties”; “ (story) point “ estimates are usually considered inadequate because they fail to reflect this uncertainty.
2. The estimate is different from the promise; for example, accusing the developer of spending 3 days, he /she estimates that the completion of the work in 2 may be a counterproductive attitude, usually leading to the result of future overestimation.
3. Estimation is not the final answer, it only reflects the information that is in the communication; should always allow the estimated value to be updated upwards or downwards based on new information.

Agile estimation References

• Estimation — Agile Alliance
• What is Agile Estimation?
• What is Planning Poker in Agile?