ACP Agile Estimation and Sizing 2 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: T-Shirt sizing (XS, S, M, L, XL) is best suited for which phase of agile estimation?
- Sprint-level detailed planning
- High-level portfolio or roadmap estimation (Correct answer)
- Calculating individual developer capacity
- Final release sign-off
Correct answer: High-level portfolio or roadmap estimation
T-shirt sizing provides a fast, rough estimate for a large number of items at the portfolio or roadmap level before detailed sprint-level sizing is needed.
Question 2: Which agile estimation technique groups a large number of items on a wall from smallest to largest without using numerical values?
- Planning Poker
- Affinity Estimation (Correct answer)
- Story Mapping
- Wideband Delphi
Correct answer: Affinity Estimation
Affinity Estimation has team members silently arrange items from smallest to largest on a wall, then add size labels after groupings emerge, making it fast for large backlogs.
Question 3: A team's last three sprint velocities were 32, 28, and 36 story points. There are 220 story points remaining in the backlog. Approximately how many more sprints are needed to complete the project?
- 5 sprints
- 7 sprints (Correct answer)
- 9 sprints
- 11 sprints
Correct answer: 7 sprints
Average velocity = (32+28+36)/3 = 32 points/sprint; 220 ÷ 32 ≈ 6.9, so approximately 7 sprints are needed.
Question 4: What is a key risk of using a team's velocity from a previous project to plan a new project with different team members?
- Velocity is always too high to use for planning
- Team composition changes affect velocity, making prior data unreliable (Correct answer)
- Story points cannot be reused across projects
- Velocity only applies to Kanban, not Scrum
Correct answer: Team composition changes affect velocity, making prior data unreliable
Velocity is team-specific because it reflects the collective capability, practices, and shared understanding of that particular team — a different team will have a different velocity.
Question 5: In agile, what is the purpose of 'Definition of Ready' (DoR) as it relates to estimation?
- It defines when a sprint can be closed
- It ensures stories are well-understood enough for the team to estimate confidently (Correct answer)
- It replaces the need for story points entirely
- It governs the acceptance criteria sign-off process
Correct answer: It ensures stories are well-understood enough for the team to estimate confidently
A Definition of Ready ensures user stories have enough detail, acceptance criteria, and clarity so the team can estimate them accurately during backlog refinement.
Question 6: Which statement best reflects the agile view on estimation accuracy?
- Estimates must be exact to prevent scope creep
- Estimates are commitments and must not change after sprint planning
- Estimates are approximations that improve over time as the team learns (Correct answer)
- Estimates should only be made by the project manager
Correct answer: Estimates are approximations that improve over time as the team learns
Agile treats estimates as approximations that become more accurate as teams gain experience, learn their velocity, and refine their understanding of the product.
Question 7: What does the term 'cone of uncertainty' mean in agile project planning?
- The range of team members' skill levels
- Estimate accuracy improves as more is known about the project over time (Correct answer)
- The number of stories that are uncertain in a sprint
- The risk register's confidence interval
Correct answer: Estimate accuracy improves as more is known about the project over time
The cone of uncertainty illustrates that early project estimates have a wide range of variance that narrows as discovery, prototyping, and development provide more information.
ACP Agile Estimation and Sizing 2
T-Shirt sizing (XS, S, M, L, XL) is best suited for which phase of agile estimation?