Back

Estimating Agile Tasks For Product Owners – Part 2

Tracking Tasks

Scrum boards, whether virtual or physical, help organize tasks for the team and visualize the work to be done, the work already in progress, and the work that has already been done. Things like blocked work and dependencies can also be tracked from the Scrum board to give more visibility of the project situation. In order to see the time needed to do complete all tasks for the iteration in terms of hours, it can be helpful to track the remaining work daily versus an ideal trend in the burndown chart.

For the Product Owner, tracking tasks lets them learn more about the capacity of their team as well as the nature of the work being done. This is especially helpful for doing strategic and tactical plans for the project. When the Product Owner sees that there is a lot of work but not enough time, they can justify to stakeholders the need for more team members in the project, or the need for adjusting the product roadmap, or the reprioritization of features. Because impediments affect the product, it is important for the Product Owner to know about these in order to mitigate them, along with the Scrum Master. Resolving impediments will take up time, and these may be turned into tasks, which will also have to be estimated and taken into account in tracking.

Looking back at estimates, Product Owners can also let them guide the team in being able to assess tasks better by looking at the performance of past Sprints. Sprint retrospectives are excellent venues for making improvements, such as re-negotiating estimation agreements. It is common for Agile teams, especially those just starting out, to change their working agreements to fit their needs. In terms of estimation, they could find various techniques in estimating work better as well as patterns in tasks that can inform them how long recurring tasks would take to finish.

Part of the nature of Agile is continuous improvements in the project, the process, and the product. The more data there is for the team, the better the decision making can be, especially for an empirical framework such as Scrum. Product Owners may not know how their product will be implemented, but they should know what their product is about. Part of the estimation process is for the development team to know more about what a user story is about and what the requirements are. Product Owners are there to help the team estimate better by letting them understand the product better.

<– Continue Reading –>

Our Book Recommendations

We found these books great for finding out more information on Agile Scrum:

Master of Agile – Scrum Product Owner With 59 Seconds Agile (Video Training Course)

Introductory Offer: Free Course

What is this course?

This ‘Master of Agile – Scrum Product Owner With 59 Seconds Agile (Video Training Course)’ provides an in-depth understanding of the Scrum Product Owner roles and responsibilities

You will explore the Agile Scrum project life-cycle, including how an Agile User Story is created, to how we know when it is ‘done’

This course is aimed at those with or without prior knowledge and experience of the Agile values and principles

During this course you will learn the tools needed to succeed as a Scrum Product Owner

What will you learn?

You will gain an in-depth understanding of the Scrum Product Owner roles and responsibilities, and you will be able to

  • Fully understand the role of the Scrum Product Owner
  • Understand the roles involved in an Agile project
  • Create an effective Product Backlog
  • Effectively participate in Scrum Meetings such as the Daily Stand-up, Sprint Review and Retrospective
  • Identify the roles involves in the Scrum Team

What topics are covered within this course?

You will cover the following topics during this course:

  1. An Introduction to Agile Project Management (Product Owner)
  2. The 12 Agile Principles (Product Owner)
  3. The Declaration of Interdependence (Product Owner)
  4. Introduction to Scrum (Product Owner)
  5. Scrum Project Roles (Product Owner)
  6. The Agile Project Life-cycle (Product Owner)
  7. Acceptance Criteria and the Prioritised Product Backlog (Product Owner)
  8. Epics and Personas (Product Owner)
  9. Sprint Planning (Product Owner)
  10. User Stories (Product Owner)
  11. The Daily Scrum (Product Owner)
  12. The Product Backlog (Product Owner)
  13. Scrum Charts (Product Owner)
  14. Review and Retrospective (Product Owner)
  15. Validating a Sprint (Product Owner)
  16. Releasing the Product (Product Owner)
Translate »