Saturday 15 July 2017

Sizing Backlog Items with Team Services

Backlog item sizing will help an Agile team to identify their velocity and plan for future iterations/sprints considering it. It is important the team members have discussed a backlog item and have a common understanding on what needs to be done before it is relatively estimated. Sizing for backlog items in Team Services work items such as User Story, Bug can be updated in Story Points or Effort field depending on the template you are using. Team Services extension, “Estimate” is available in Visual Studio Marketplace allow you to do effective estimating of backlog item, by enabling team to vote for each work item using on Team Services, while getting Story Points or Effort field update automatically with the size value, once team is committed to a size.

When you have installed Team Services extension Estimate  you will see new menu item “Estimate work item(s)” available in the work item popup menu.image

You can go to Estamates sub tab available in Work tab as well. Then start a new session to estimate work items.image

Start the session and other team members can join the session in the Estimates tab.image

Team members can then vote for the work items by selecting a work item. Selecting work item can be only done by the session started member only and others can vote.01

Voting value will be shown to you but not to others. Until someone session owner reveal it.02

Once all votes given, average estimate can be viewed as an average of number of people voted.03

Team can have discussions and agree on the average or go for a revote. Session owner (start initiator) can select a different work item and select the required work item to enable a revote. If team agrees on an average it can be committed to the work item. It is possible to alter the auto calculated average manually before committing to the value.04

This value will be updated to the Story Points/Efforts field of the work item.

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