Clayton 
Derek 
Roy 
Clayton Lengel-Zigich, Roy van de Water, Derek Neighors and Drew LeSueur talk about White Elephant estimating, a new way to generate estimates for stories to instead of the same-old planning poker.
- Compare stats against planning poker
- 80 stories
- 5 minutes to discuss process/application
- 25 minutes to do estimation
- 10 minutes to get velocity
- Team is moving around and more enganged
- Everyone had to be active
- Nobody can set the tone
- Disagreements were resolved quickly
- Made easier by having a trusting team
- Link to blog post: http://blog.mikepearce.net/2011/05/02/how-do-i-estimate-how-long-an-agile-project-will-take-before-we-start/
I am curious as to how the group knows the story well enough to be able to accurately estimate it in less than a minute? What kind of preparation is done before the estimation meeting?
Alex,
The team doesn’t spend too much time doing any specific preparation before estimating stories. Since we know that estimates are just that, estimates, we spend just enough time on them to be useful to the team.
– Clayton