Lean Agile Edinburgh

This month, Tim Leslie will be giving a talk on Effective Estimation in an Agile Environment. After the talk, we will continue with lean coffee and other group-style activities along with networking.

Courtesy of Modulr, there will be pizza, beer and other software drinks available.

Talk description

There are few questions more scary than "how long will it take?". Some teams seem to miss every deadline by miles. Others have given up and work without estimates, incorrectly rejecting them as a relic of waterfall mentality. Most destructive of all, the question has the power to rip teams apart - driving a wedge between the project manager and engineers. The engineers seeing it as a cynical "motivational" tool - the crack of the whip - while the Project Manager loses faith in the competence or even trustworthiness of the engineering team as they continuously miss commitments.

It doesn't have to be this way. I've now worked for two companies where we have been able to reliably predict project duration and clearly articulate how we are doing compared with our estimates. The secrets to this success are much deeper than story points and planning poker. A solid foundation including a cohesive, well structured team and recognition of technical debt are crucial.

In this talk I will share some of my experiences of what works (and what doesn't!).

Speaker Bio: Tim joined Float as their new CTO in January - a little company with a big heart that helps small businesses survive and thrive through effective cash management.

Prior to this he managed the development team at Sumdog and he even wrote actual code for a living not so long ago.

He loves his family, his garden and his tractor very much.