A critical part of any agile approach is being able to guide the team in what they need to do by providing them with a prioritised list of work that needs to be done. And when priorities themselves are influenced by how large a piece of work is, how does a team working in an agile manner move away from traditional time based estimating approaches to size based approaches and improve their ability to estimate whilst taking less time to do it?

This RDN Dev Day will provide attendees with not on the theory but also the practical hands-on experience in doing just this.
The day will be broken down into two main parts, with the first being estimating.  Attendees will quickly work through the theory of planning and tracking an agile project and how estimates influence them. They will then work through how size based estimation works compared with other techniques and some of the practical ways techniques that can be used to size work to be done by the team.  They will then apply these practices in a team based exercise to ensure they are understood and experienced.

The second part of the day will see teams examine the options for defining and prioritising work including ways to estimate business value, risk and return on investment and what level of detail requirements should be expressed at.  They will then work through different approaches to prioritising requirements with stakeholders and the team before continuing the practical exercise from the first part of the day and producing a prioritised list of requirements that an agile team could then deliver on.

At the conclusion of the day attendees should not only understand the theory of estimating and prioritising a product backlog but also have experienced the practices themselves so that they can feel ready to directly apply these techniques to their own projects the very next day.

PRESENTER:

DAMIAN MACLELLAN

Principal Consultant, Readify

Damian Maclennan is a technologist with over ten years experience in object oriented design, database design and management, web and connected systems development, solutions and integration architecture as well as XP methodologies and agile development practices such as Test Driven Development and Continuous Integration.

He has worked with large and small businesses as well as the not-for-profit sector, and has worked on some of Australia’s most well known and highly trafficked websites.
Damian’s core technical skills are focused around architecting web and server side systems, database and domain modeling and integration architecture.

He works to improve development practices in teams by introducing tools such as source control, continuous integration and unit testing.
Damian is a Certified Scrum Master and has worked extensively with bringing agile methodologies to teams and organisations.