Agile Ideal Time
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 accurate is 6 days.
But you also must take into account that their estimate was inaccurate, you must use the Velocity value too, lets say the previous iteration took 30% longer than was estimated then you must multiple the Actual time by this factor as well , 6days x 1.3 = 8days.
So the estimated time of 2 days is now actually 8days.
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 accurate is 6 days.
But you also must take into account that their estimate was inaccurate, you must use the Velocity value too, lets say the previous iteration took 30% longer than was estimated then you must multiple the Actual time by this factor as well , 6days x 1.3 = 8days.
So the estimated time of 2 days is now actually 8days.
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