In addition to improving the efficiency of the development team, estimation gives developers a fair amount of time to complete tasks. This results in less stress for the developers. Knowing how much time a task should take from the beginning, allows developers to approach a task more confidently. Also, it allows developers to make informed decisions based on their own abilities. A more senior developer knows that he or she may be able to complete a task faster than a less experienced developer. Likewise, a new team member should realize that they may take longer than the estimated average.
From a more general perspective, estimates improve progress tracking. Tools like kanban boards are useful for showing how much work has been finished, how much is currently in development, and how much remains to be started. Task estimation gives weight to the tasks on a kanban board. Instead of just a number of tasks, the Scrum team sees how large or small each of these tasks is. Having five finished tasks, and five tasks to go doesn’t represent the halfway point if the five finished tasks were large and the five remaining are small.
How Estimations Benefit from Developers
The role best equipped to make these estimations are developers themselves. In addition to benefiting from estimating tasks, developers can help to create more accurate estimations. One reason for this is because developers are familiar with development. From problems that might come up, to the necessary amount of detail in specifications, developers have more of an intuition for estimation. What sounds small to other roles may be a red flag for a large task to a developer. Take the example of a checkbox in an interface. To those unfamiliar with development, it may sound simple and easy. However, this could be much more complicated, depending on the environment. A developer who has worked on the interface before may know that there are many steps to add a new checkbox. Furthermore, it may require resizing and shifting around of other elements in the interface. What sounds like a few minutes of work to most people, maybe closer to a day or more for developers.
Recommended Further Reading
The following materials may assist you in order to get the most out of this course: