estimating meetings Archives - Agile Testing with Lisa Crispin

Focus on the “Why”, not the “How” for User Stories

November 4, 2011 / Lisa Crispin / agile teams, estimating meetings, Publications, Techwell Blog, writing / No Comments

In my latest Techwell blog post, I tell the tale of our most recent estimating meeting, where the product owner brought us a user story that was written as a technical implementation. We had to get him to back up and tell us the purpose of the story, so that we could determine the appropriate […]

Using Mind Maps for Test Planning

February 28, 2011 / Lisa Crispin / agile testing, communicating, estimating meetings, exploratory testing, Functional test tools, mind maps, planning, remote team members, software quality / 12 Comments

Recently I wrote a post about how our team used a mind map to help us with theme planning. We also sometimes use mind maps to help us in planning our testing. Some people asked if I’d post an example. Here it is: We’re a financial services company, and this theme was a rewrite of […]

Estimation Roller Coaster

February 1, 2011 / Lisa Crispin / agile testing, estimating meetings, exploratory testing, planning, remote team members / 2 Comments

I report on my team’s experiences with sizing and estimating themes and stories in an article just published on StickyMinds, Estimation Roller Coaster. I’ve had some good feedback already via Twitter. Please let me know what you think!

Mind Maps for Theme Planning

January 9, 2011 / Lisa Crispin / communicating, estimating meetings, mind maps, planning / 4 Comments

When we have a new theme coming up, we usually start a few weeks or months in advance by having one or more brainstorming meetings with our Product Owner and possibly other stakeholders. The PO often draws examples on the whiteboard as we discuss: algorithms for calculations, or diagrams for workflow. We ask questions to […]