Software sizing is an essential part of estimating our resource needs for a project. In order to forecast time and budget, we need to be able to quantify “what” we are building. This is because the resources required are related to “how much” software is built.

Randomized Branch Sampling (RBS) represents an approach that can enable us to accurately size a prospective project by focusing on just a small portion of the planned tasks. It was developed so an individual only had to count the number of fruit that existed on a limited number of branches of a fruit tree to arrive at a highly reliable estimate of the actual number of fruit that could be harvested from the entire tree. The same technique can be applied to Agile and Lean projects by examining a subset of user stories and tasks across a range of proposed epics in order to estimate total project size.

This session will give attendees practical knowledge on how to use Scrumban Randomized Branch Sampling (RBS) when planning Agile projects. The technique presented will produce accurate results for most projects with relatively little effort.

About the speakers:

Dimitar Bakardzhiev (Presenter) is the Managing Director of Taller Technologies Bulgaria and an expert in driving successful and cost-effective technology development. As a Lean-Kanban University (LKU)-Accredited Kanban Trainer (AKT) and avid, expert Kanban practitioner, Dimitar puts lean principles to work every day when managing complex software projects with a special focus on building innovative, powerful mobile CRM solutions for Oracle CRM On Demand and Siebel CRM users.

Ajay Reddy (Introduction) is the co-founder of ScrumDo.com, Enterprise Agility coach at CodeGenesys, LLC, co-creator of getScrumban.com and author of the upcoming Addison Wesley book Scrumban [R]Evolutions.

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Agile teams around the world are trying to find the answers to some burning questions:

• Should we do Scrum or should we do Kanban?
• Is one better suited for certain types of teams?
• Do we have to progress through one before being ready for the other?
• Is there a good hybrid? (What’s this thing called Scrumban?)

If you’re asking similar questions, this introduction of Scrumban will demystify what many have made an unnecessarily complex debate.

Part 2:

As engineers we want to help solve problems effectively. As Agilists we want to improve continuously. Some familiar tools to help us achieve these ends include feedback loops through retrospectives and operations reviews. But these tools rarely help us answer the question of what we should focus on improving:

• Should you improve in every suggested area teams identify?
• What’s the minimum level of understanding that needs to be achieved before pressing forward with improvement efforts?

Far less familiar in the world of IT, but proven to be incredibly effective in other realms, is the a disciplined approach to problem solving by employing techniques associated with A3 Thinking. Made famous by Toyota, A3 Thinking emphasizes data driven techniques to effectively solve important problems and sustainably improve work processes. In this portion of our presentation, we’ll walk you through the technique as adapted for knowledge work and introduce you to another weapon in your arsenal for problem-solving.

About the speaker:

Your speaker for these topics is Ajay Reddy, an LKU (Lean Kanban University) Accredited Trainer and coach. He’s helped organizations apply Scrum, Kanban and Scrumban at enterprise scale, and is ready to share his experiences with you in this presentation. His book, ScrumbA3n – Journeys from Mess to Success, is scheduled to be published later this year.

Ajay is an associate of David J. Anderson & Associates (regarded as the father of the Kanban Method), founder of Code Genesys.com (a Kanban-Agile IT solutions boutique), and co-founder of ScrumDo.com (a cloud-based project management tool for Scrum teams).

He enjoys spending time with his family, following the Indian national cricket team, and catching a Boston Bruins game every now and then. You can engage with Ajay on Twitter at @ajrdy, on the web at http://scrumban.io, or at local tech meetup groups in Boston and Worcester.