Scrum Ireland

Ideal time is the time to complete a task, without taking into account other non-developer tasks such as email, meetings. The total time taken (with the task + email + meetings +....) is known as the Elapsed Time (Real Time). Ideal time is useful when actually trying to get a correct time estimation for tasks. If a developer gives an estimation of 2 days for a task then there are a few factors you must take into account. First of all the 2 days is probably 2 Ideal Days, but this is not of much use if you do not know how much time the developer actually spends on the task (Ideal Time) and how much time they spend in total (Real Time). Lets say the developer has an Ideal Time/Real Time ratio of 1:3 meaning they spend one third of their time actually working on the task and two thirds of the time at meetings, email, browsing, lunch etc. Then you must multiply their 2 day estimate by this factor i.e. 2days x 3 = 6days. So know the Actual time for the task assuming their estimate was accura...

The "Work Unit" is a relative measurement of task time estimations against one another i.e. it's not an absolute time, e.g. Task 1 will take twice as long as Task 2. The Work Unit is also used in combination with Velocity (I'm not exactly sure how?) Task Estimation time = "Work Unit" x Velocity.

The measurement of the time taken for the team to complete an iteration. Velocity is used in combination with what are know as "Work Units" to give more accurate task time estimations. This is a useful record as it allows one to measure the difference between the estimated time and the actual time it takes the team to actually do the work. Using this value, you can adjust the estimates for future iterations and maybe projects as a whole. E.g. 4 developers on your team including yourself. 5 iterations in a project release. Each iteration is 2 weeks (10 days ). iteration 0: You and your team estimate 5 features can be implemented. At the end of the iteration only 4 of the features are completed, it takes another 3 days to complete the final feature. The iteration has actually taken 13days in total therefore the Velocity is currently 13/10 = 1.3. Use this 1.3 as a multipation factor in the estimation for the next release. iteration 1: You and your team estimate 4 features can b...