Timing of Estimates

When to give estimates?

Estimation is vital to projects. At the start of a project, a plan is drafted for the project, including how many people will be on the team, based on a good estimate. Estimation is used to determine whether the customer’s intended deadlines are achievable. During a project, estimation is used to determine the impact of new and changed work items in order to monitor the growth of the scope and re-planning.

Estimation is, therefore, a continuous process in Agile and is employed in the following steps:

Start of the project

An initial estimate is needed to provide a quote for a project. In lightweight Agile approaches, this isn’t always described. This applies to Scrum or Extreme Programming. These projects start with the first iteration in which work items ...