Level of Effort Estimation
What is it?
Level of effort estimation is an activity where teams estimate the complexity of upcoming work.
WLevel of effort should be measured for all kinds of work: research, design, and development alike. Teams should gauge level of effort for their work so that they have an idea of what's too much work for a given iteration, and can track the changes over time.
Measuring level of effort changes team-to-team. The overarching goal of an Agile team each iteration is to finish what they commit to. IF they have committed to too much work and can't finish, they should reduce the scope of the iteration's work itself; this is important to continually progress in delivery of the work and avoid work that is in progress for too long without delivering.
In order to do this successfully, teams must measure the effort levels of tasks in their backlog. This helps to holistically understand how much work is "too much" for the team in one iteration. Depending on the Agile method, teams may plan entire iterations (like Scrum method) or pick up one-off tasks as they are ready for the work (like Kanban method). All methods of Agile require teams to measure their effort; this may lead to breaking down tasks or splitting them out into separate tickets, and will save teams from unfinished work at the end of iterations.
Each team is highly unique in the case of how much work they can get done in one iteration. It depends on their skills, their availability, and a lot of other things. The methods of measuring level of effort remain the same, but the number of stories each team can get done in one iteration is highly variable and changes team to team. Learn how to measure level of effort in the next lesson.
Velocity is measured in story points per sprint. For instance, you'd describe the velocity of the team by saying "The team's velocity is 20 story points per sprint; the team can finish 20 story points of work on average every sprint".
Who owns it?
âThe Scrum Master duty owns this in the Scrum method.
The Product strategy function owns this work in Tech Fleet.
When does it happen?
Tickets in the backlog should be estimated with their level of effort before they get planned for sprints. This helps the team measure their speed.
What are the outcomes?
Estimated tickets ready for sprints
