I can't answer your question. All I can say about...

2009-01-28T10:29:00.000-06:00

I can't answer your question. All I can say about estimating is from when I was doing hardware development. I don't believe my group ever fell victim to Parkinson's Law because we never ever met our deadlines.

My first thought to counter the question of "did w...

2009-01-28T09:41:00.000-06:00

My first thought to counter the question of "did we succumb to parkinson's law?" is this: Did you ever exceed your "attempted velocity" for an iteration? The question of whether or not you let your work fill the space is addressed if you ever added a new story to an iteration.

Also, I find Chris comment about aggressive vs conservative estimates intersting. I always thought the agile idea of getting a group consensus should eliminate any one person's propensity to pessimistically or optimisically estimate the size of a story or feature.

The feeling that some work was fluff might come from a less than stellar product owner; it's basically their job to keep the stories done in line with the vision for the project, keeping the team on track.

But to be honest, I'm new to agile concepts myself. Great post, it sounds like you're already doing your post-mortems: reviewing how you're applying agile and changing as you need to. Keep up the good work!

Comments on Off The Schneid: Parkinson's Law - A lesson in estimating

I can't answer your question. All I can say about...

My first thought to counter the question of "did w...