CLASSROOM TRAINING

Effort Estimation Training

Budapest

  • Date: To be announced
  • Trainer: Gábor
  • Language: Hungarian
  • Duration: 2x5 hours
*CLICK for other dates in Budapest Notify me

Cluj-Napoca

  • Date: To be announced
  • Trainer: Gábor
  • Language: English
  • Duration: 2x5 hours
*CLICK for other dates in Cluj-Napoca Notify me

Trainers

Gábor

Picture of Gábor Erényi, Lead Agile Consultant and Project Management expert of Sprint Consulting

Gábor is an Agile consultant, trainer and coach at Sprint Consulting, with 20+ years of experience in IT project and program management in various business segments and project/program sizes. He is a certified Project Management Professional (PMP). Gabor is passionate about sharing his experience, best practices and helping teams and individuals to find new ways to constantly improve.

Overview

A lot of organisations struggle with estimations: they find that creating them takes too much time, they find them unreliable, company workers are unwilling to provide them as they fear that the numbers will be used against them, customers always will push for lower numbers and the list of problems goes on. All these problems are resulting in never-ending or failing projects, overrun budgets, angry customers, frustrated employees and a general lack of trust.

This training provides practical advice with examples and exercises on how organisations, including managers and their employees can avoid this situation. Participants will not only learn estimation techniques usable in traditional and agile environments as well, but will get practical advice on which technique to choose, how to clarify scope and open issues, identify risks, calculate reserves, deal with uncertainty and handle the psychological aspects and barriers during estimation sessions along with how to communicate the resulting numbers, risks and corresponding deadlines to managers or customers effectively.

Objective

In this 2×5 hours course, participants will gain an understanding of different types of effort estimation approaches.

Target Audience

All IT project roles related to planning and estimation.

Prerequisite

Prior basic experience in estimation and planning.

Content

Introduction

  • The goal, purpose and definition of estimation
  • Estimation accuracy and resolution levels, tradeoff between time spent on estimation and estimation accuracy

Estimation types and units

  • Time (effort, duration, differentiation between gross and net time)
  • Cost
  • Resource units
  • Abstract estimation (story points, T-shirt sizing, etc.)

Preparing for an estimation

  • Clarifying estimation scope (definition of done), required accuracy, technique, etc.
  • What to consider in an estimation (assumptions, risks, uncertainty, etc), facilitating estimation

Estimation techniques (advantages, disadvantages of each, when to use them, along with practical tips and exercises)

  • Expert judgement
  • Analogous estimation
  • Parametric estimation
  • Three point estimation (PERT distribution)
  • Bottom up estimation (WBS)
  • Planning poker
  • Magic estimation (Big wall)
  • For all techniques: performance of data analysis, risks analysis, contingency reserves, documenting assumptions, agreeing on estimations, ensuring proper confidence level

Outputs of estimation techniques

  • Value, range, probability, risks, assumptions, contingencies, reserves, documented basis of estimations

The psychology of estimation, soft skills

  • Left brain vs. right brain
  • Accuracy of estimating short time vs. long time periods
  • How to estimate uncertainty
  • Optimists, pessimists estimation, pressure levels, honesty and autonomy, expert bias, the effect of personality types on estimation

Pitfalls, bad practices

  • Padding 
  • Brooks,’ law
  • Reverse engineering from the deadline
  • Student syndrome, Parkinson’s law

Usage of estimation for planning and negotiation

  • How to communicate estimations, estimate ranges, internal and external targets
  • Project management triangle (iron triangle), trade-offs
  • Schedule compression, fast tracking
  • Scope reduction
Connected Training:

Budapest

  • Date: To be announced
  • Trainer: Gábor
  • Language: Hungarian
  • Duration: 2x5 hours
*CLICK for other dates in Budapest Notify me

Cluj-Napoca

  • Date: To be announced
  • Trainer: Gábor
  • Language: English
  • Duration: 2x5 hours
*CLICK for other dates in Cluj-Napoca Notify me