SCRUM Task Estimation

Estimating the time to complete a User Story in SCRUM is done by the development team. I mean the whole development team and not just the individual developer. 
This is done using some sort of voting system which allows the development team to contribute their estimate for the User Story. One way to vote is to use a card voting system such as voting cards where each developer votes with a card, there's an online version of this at planningpoker.com. 

Whatever medium you choose to use doesn't really matter, the process should be the same, the User Story is studied and the team may later sit together and give their estimation time by voting,if the estimates differ greatly then the reasons why should be discussed. 
If a single value cannot be decided on and the estimate is larger than the time for the Sprint then a Spike is required or the User Story should be split into smaller User Stories.  

When voting on the estimates of User Stories the Fabbonici number should be used i.e. 1, 2, 3, 6, ............
if your Spring is only 3 weeks then the maximum estimate that can be given for a single User Story is 15days, any more than this and the User Story needs to be broken up or more research done in order to get a more realistic value.


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