Estimation Session

Sizing and Effort

21-Oct-2020

*This document contains material that has been extracted from the IFPUG Counting Practices Manual. It is reproduced
in this document with permission of IFPUG
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Session Objectives
• Concepts
• Estimation Process within Mastek
• Size
• Effort

• Overview of Tasks where the sizing techniques can be used

• Ref Mastek Guidelines & Templates

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Concepts - Why Measure?

• Why do Vehicles have speedometers?

• What are we measuring?

Speed
Estimated Time
Mileage

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Concepts - Why Measure?

• Why do we use scales to weigh ourselves?

• What are we measuring?

Weight (increase or decrease)

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What is Size?

Represents a measure of the Functional User Requirements or the functionality within a

software application. Size is an inherent characteristic of a piece of software just like weight
is an inherent characteristic of a tangible material.

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What is Effort?

Represents the time in person hrs/days/months to develop/maintain a particular software

application across the different software life cycle phases like Requirements, Development ,
Testing etc.

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Estimation
Process Flow
Ide • Understand the Proposal/Contract, Change document, Requirements
ntif
y List /Product Backlog
Sco
pe

Siz
• Derive and keep the Size updated with T-shirt sizing, Story Points
e

Esti
ma • Derive the Effort with PERQ or Story Points estimation technique
te
Eff
ort
Sta • Generate Schedule/Staffing based on the effort estimates
ffin
g

Cos • Share staffing data with Finance team, calculate the Internal Cost,
t&
Pri
External Charge-out and Gross Margin % using the Standard Pricing sheet
ce

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Estimation Methods

*SET -
Function Simple Equivalent
Points Tickets.

Primarily Prod
support/AMS projects
T-shirt Story where we need to size
Sizes Points the work we do in terms
Methods of tickets, requests etc.

SET* PERQ

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Function Point Analysis : Definitions

• Function Point: Unit of measure for functional size like an hour is to measuring time, inches to
measuring distance and Fahrenheit to measuring temperature.
• Function Point Analysis: Method of measuring the functional size of a software system.
• Function Point Count: The function point measurement of a particular. For e.g. the Function point
count of an application can be 85, 100 , 230 etc
• Functional complexity: Specific complexity rating that gets assigned to a function after applying
the FP counting rules.

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Function Point Analysis : Counting Procedure

1 Count
Data
Functions 3 Determine
Unadjusted
Function
Identify Point Count
Determin counting 5 Calculate
Count
e Type of Scope & Adjusted
Transaction
Count App. Function
Functions
Boundary 2 Point
Count
4 Determine
Value
Adjustment
Factor

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Story Points - Agile Estimation

• Story-point estimate is an amalgamation of the amount of effort involved in developing the

feature. The complexity of developing it, the risk inherent in it, and so on.
-Agile Estimation and
Planning – Mike Cohn

• Story Point represents the amount of effort required to implement a user story.
-How do you estimate on an Agile project? - ThoughtWorks

It is sometimes said that is a measure of complexity, but that is only true if the complexity or risk involved in
implementing a user story translates into the effort involved in implementing it.

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What Goes Into a Story Point?

• Amount of Work to do

• Complexity of the work

• Risk or Uncertainty in doing the work

All three factors must be combined.

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 What Goes Into a Story Point?
Amount of Work to do

• Consider the case of developing two web

pages.
– first page has only 1 field and a label
asking to enter a name.
– The second page has 100 fields to also
simply be filled with a bit of text.

 The second page is no more complex.

 The only difference is that there is more to do on the second page.
 The second page should be given more story points.

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 What Goes Into a Story Point?
Complexity of the work

• Consider the case of developing two web pages.

– First page has 100 fields, each to be simply
filled with bit of text
– Second web page also with 100 fields. But
some are date fields with calendar widgets ,
some are formatted text fields like phone
numbers or Social Security numbers etc.

 Even though there are still 100 fields on this screen, these fields are harder to
implement. They’re more complex. They’ll take more time.
 This additional complexity should be reflected in the estimate provided
 The second page should be given more story points

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 What Goes Into a Story Point?
Risk and Uncertainty

– When a team has to estimate a product

backlog item, and the requesting stakeholder
is unclear about the need, that uncertainty
should be reflected in the estimate.
– Implementing a feature involves changing a
particular piece of old, brittle or complex
code that has no automated tests in place,
that risk should be reflected in the estimate

 The amount of risk and uncertainty in a product backlog item should affect the story point estimate
given to the item

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Story Points: Estimation Techniques
• Team first determines a baseline story which will be used for comparison. The baseline
story is assigned a story point value (usually 2).
• You need at least one reference story for each story point figure used in your project
i.e. one each for 2,3,5 and 8.
• Team uses Planning poker for estimating user stories using Story Points.
• Planning Poker is one of the standard method for estimating user stories using Story
Points.
• In order to play planning poker the team members need to assemble and evaluate each
story.
• The estimated story points would be based on the relative size of the user story as
determined by the team members.

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Story Points: Estimation Techniques
Planning poker

• Includes all the team members i.e. Developer, Tester, BA, SL, TA.
• Each Team members is to be given a set of ‘cards’ numbered as a Fibonacci series
(0, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13 and 21)
• Each estimator selects a card from the deck and shows it
• Likely that estimates will differ
• Justification improves accuracy

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Story Point(SP) Standardization Approach
Guidelines - Org level
• SP’s should be of sizes 1,2,3 or 5 for a Story or
Predictable requirement
• Bigger stories should be broken down

• Base reference stories should be defined and

documented
Consistent • For e.g. A story sized in Sprint 1 as a 3 SP’s should be
sized as 3 SP’s even during Sprint 9. Ref Sample

• 1 SP should be in the range of 4 - 7 person hours. Ref

Table below. Detailed guidelines are here
Standardized • SP’s should include Design, Coding, Peer review, UT,
Testing, Build , packaging & Deployment activities
within the Sprint

Org Standards – SP sizes and Person hour efforts (Ref Base data)
Story Point(SP) Size 0.5 1 2 3 5 8
Person hour effort
4-7 8-12 13-20 21-35 36-56
per SP

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Story pointing guidelines
Sample

1 2 3 5 8

• Simple • Medium • Simple • Medium development • Complex Development

configuration configuration development
changes changes • Complex data fix • Comprehensive tool /
• Complex technology evaluation
• Simple data fix configuration • Preliminary tool /
technology • Complex proof of
changes
• Basic hypercare evaluation concept
support • Medium data fix
• Medium proof of
concept
• Simple proof of
concept

• Comprehensive
hypercare support

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Story Points – Terms

Term Description Calculated as

The number of story points
Velocity that the team is capable of Story Points delivered in last 3 sprints / 3
delivering during a sprint
Calendar time of sprint minus holidays.

Number of working days in a While the calendar time of a sprint would

Sprint Length
sprint remain fixed (recommended) the velocity will
change based on the number of working days
available.
Expected development effort
Total Development Effort (Hrs)/ Total Story
Productivity in person hours per story
Points for the sprint
points.

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Story Points – Effort Estimation

• Select a Base story which is assigned Story Points (usually 2)

• Break the story into tasks/activities as per the Definition of Done and estimate those in hours (no
fractions)
• Total effort should be a multiple of 8 (day) or rounded off to a multiple of 8.
• This would give the relation of 1 SP = Total Hours
• Hours per story point (Productivity) = Total Hours/(story points of the base story)
• Available Capacity = Team Size * Working Hrs for Sprint
• Velocity(initial) = Available Capacity / Productivity
• Velocity determines the total number of Story Points that can be taken in a particular Sprint.

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Simple Equivalent Tickets
Sizing for AMS projects - Guidelines

• Define Simple, Medium and Complex activities. 2 approaches

– QMS Complexity Identification Definition’s
– Project Specific Complexity Identification Definition’s

• Define the Conversion Ratio between Simple, Medium and Complex activities
– Effort multipliers

• Calculate SETs for the month or as per project needs

– Derive productivity and related attributes. For e.g. 1.1 SETs/PDs

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T Shirt Sizing
Relative sizing approach

• Use T-shirt sizes: S, M, L, XL as a way to bucket the unit of work

• Go over user stories or unit of work in a team setting and have

team members put it into one of 4 buckets.

• T-shirt sizes are an F(c, e, r) where c is complexity e is efforts and

r is risk as compared to the base T-shirt size.

• Scale of T-shirt size scoping can be adjusted based on business

and project needs.

• T-shirt sizes can be allocated story points - To derive velocity and

monitor the projects progress

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T-shirt size to Story points
Suggested approach

T-shirt Size Story Point Value T-shirt Size Estimate Work (in person days)

XS 1 XS 2 - 3 days

S 2 S 5 - 8 days

M 3 M 10 - 15 days

L 5 L 20 - 25 days

XL 8 XL 30 - 50 days

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PERQ : Effort Estimation

 Complexity & Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) based Estimation.

 Scope decomposed into Process, Entry, Reports and Query components.
 Components classified as Simple, Medium or Complex based on defined metrics & guidelines to
derive the Construction Effort.
 Overall Effort derived as a percentage of the Construction Effort.
 Metrics has currently been defined to handle scope for .NET, Java, Functional Testing, Automated
Testing and Performance Testing Project types.

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PERQ : Effort Estimation
Create WBS, Classify as
Download PERQ Effort Arrive at Phase Level
E,P,R,Q or Testing
Estimation Template efforts in the "Project
Components in "Scope"
(frmsdp88) Execution Effort" ws .
ws.

Update Project attributes Reconcile Efforts with

Review "Activity Effort"
in the "Project inputs from Staffing and
and "Analysis" ws
Parameters" ws FP based predictions

Select Appropriate
Finalize Phase/Activity
Methodology in the
Identify Project Type level Efforts in "Project
"Project Execution
Execution Effort" ws.
Effort" ws

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Mastek Estimation Guidelines and Templates

• Procedure for Estimation PDSDP114

• Estimation Technique for Agile Projects GDSDP718
• Guidelines on Estimation GDSDP50
• PERQ Effort Estimation Template FRMSDP88
• Function Point Sizing Template FRMSDP119

Ref QMS : Masteknet -> GoTo -> Process (OPG) Portal -> Quality Management System

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Estimation to Life Cycle Mapping

Life Cycle Story Points PERQ SET*

Proposal Yes Yes N/A

Requirements Yes Yes N/A

Design Yes Yes N/A

Development Yes Yes N/A

Verification (Testing) Yes Yes N/A

Maintenance (AMS) N/A N/A Yes

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 Thank You

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