The document discusses experiments conducted by a federal government product team with no estimates. They switched from Scrum to Kanban, removed story pointing, and used discussion cards and flow metrics instead. This improved refinement discussions and allowed forecasting using cycle times. They later returned to Scrum and then gradually reintroduced pointing. Key lessons were that no estimates can work with a stable, high-trust team comfortable with the domain if refinement ensures stories are not too large.
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Agenda
1. What is NoEstimates & Setting Our Shared Context
2. Switching to Kanban
3. Experimenting with Refinement
4. Culture of Experimentation
5. Returning to Scrum
6. Returning to Pointing
7. Feedback & Questions
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Let’s gather data to inform our
time together
Experience with scaled
agile teams
Understand the idea
behind #NoEstimates
Experience with No
Estimates
Level
Setting
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10+ times daily to
production
Deployments
20-30 minutes to
production
Code Commits
Acknowledgement in ~1
minute
Incidents
Golden Metrics
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Project Timeline
2016
March 30
Sprint 1
First Team
May 24
Sprint 31
2 Teams
2017
August 30
Sprint 38
3 Teams
13. excella.com | @excellaco
Project Timeline
2016
March 30
Sprint 1
First Team
May 24
Sprint 31
2 Teams
2017
August 30
Sprint 38
3 Teams
2018
March 28
Sprint 53
Switch to
Kanban
14. excella.com | @excellaco
Project Timeline
2016
March 30
Sprint 1
First Team
May 24
Sprint 31
2 Teams
2017
August 30
Sprint 38
3 Teams
2018
March 28
Sprint 53
Switch to
Kanban
April 25
Sprint 55
Significant
Go-Live
15. excella.com | @excellaco
Project Timeline
2016
March 30
Sprint 1
First Team
May 24
Sprint 31
2 Teams
2017
August 30
Sprint 38
3 Teams
2018
March 28
Sprint 53
Switch to
Kanban
April 25
Sprint 55
Significant
Go-Live
June 20
Sprint 59
“No Pointing”
Begins
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Project Timeline
2016
March 30
Sprint 1
First Team
May 24
Sprint 31
2 Teams
2017
August 30
Sprint 38
3 Teams
2018
March 28
Sprint 53
Switch to
Kanban
April 25
Sprint 55
Significant Go-Live
June 20
Sprint 59
“No Pointing”
Begins
December 26
Sprint 72
Return to Scrum
17. excella.com | @excellaco
Project Timeline
2016
March 30
Sprint 1
First Team
May 24
Sprint 31
2 Teams
2017
August 30
Sprint 38
3 Teams
2018
March 28
Sprint 53
Switch to
Kanban
April 25
Sprint 55
Significant Go-Live
June 20
Sprint 59
“No Pointing”
Begins
December 26
Sprint 72
Return to Scrum
2019
April 3
Sprint 79
Next Significant
Release
18. excella.com | @excellaco
Project Timeline
2016
March 30
Sprint 1
First Team
May 24
Sprint 31
2 Teams
2017
August 30
Sprint 38
3 Teams
2018
March 28
Sprint 53
Switch to
Kanban
April 25
Sprint 55
Significant Go-Live
June 20
Sprint 59
“No Pointing”
Begins
December 26
Sprint 72
Return to Scrum
2019
April 3
Sprint 79
Next Significant
Release
July 10
Sprint 86
Return to
Pointing
24. excella.com | @excellaco
June 13th 2018 Slack Message
• Joe Hunt, a Faux Pa’s developer, had been questioning the value of our refinement prior to Kanban.
• After our Kanban workshop, we were not done. Working groups formed to address certain “Day One” details of
our Scrum-to-Kanban transition. Joe joined the Pointing group. 😲
• 🖤 iterative processes: He presented the idea, collected feedback and adjusted the proposal.
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The “No Pointing” Experiment
Problem Definition:
“The problem with our pointing with t-shirt sizes is that our velocity is more or
less a guess and we can’t forecast with confidence.” – J. Hunt
Proposed Solution:
• Remove pointing. It’s a low value activity for us.
• Monitor and plan work using cycle time & throughput measurements
• Introduce a new ticket discussion framework in lieu of t-shirt sizes to drive
discussion.
Hypothesis:
Replacing pointing with this new discussion framework will:
a) improve the quality of our ticket refinement discussions
b) measure velocity and make forecasts using PBIs and cycle time.
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Actual post
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Common Questions
• Product Owner or OIT approval?
• Aren’t points required?
• How did we forecast?
• How did we report out?
• How did we change our ceremonies?
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Velocity Over 42 Months
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Go Live Govt
Lapse
Reporting
Gap
Pointing
Resumes
3/30/16
9/20/19
2 Teams 3 Teams
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Pointing (Slowly) Makes a Comeback
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Exiting the Sprint 85’s Overall RetroExiting a Sprint 75 Team Retro
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Feedback from the teams
• One of the benefits of not pointing was it helped some members of the team engage
more in other aspects of the refinement process.
• It was a very high-functioning team with a deep understanding of the product.
Pointing wasn't necessary with the conditions we were working under.
• Forced us to really look at the size and scope of a story. Over time, we became
naturally comfortable with a certain size of story and anything that felt too large we
broke down further into more stories or spikes
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Lessons Learned
• Explicitly ask, "Is this split as small as it can be?”
• Only do it under similar conditions - namely a high trust team setting
• Keep the color-coded cards as a system of refinement. Push team(s) to be more
disciplined about splitting up large stories to prevent scope variance.
• Refine/clarify the purpose of the foam cards. They are meant to facilitate discussion.
• Only in a similar situation. Make 3 the default. If larger, discuss the ticket’s shape and
scope, then point it.
excella.com | @excellaco
39. No Estimates can work when there is…
• Stable team composition
• Culture of experimentation
• Team has comfort with domain and/or technology
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