Agile Planning & Estimation Flashcards
7 cards from real ICP practice questions. Tap to flip, then mark Knew It or Still Learning — missed cards come back until you master them.
Read the first 7 Agile Planning & Estimation flashcards as text
What is the primary purpose of story points in Agile estimation?
Answer: To provide a relative measure of effort, complexity, and uncertainty for a user story
Story points represent a relative measure of effort, complexity, and risk — not actual time — allowing teams to estimate without committing to exact hours.
During Planning Poker, what happens when team members reveal widely different estimates for the same user story?
Answer: The team discusses the reasons for the difference to reach a shared understanding
Wide divergence in Planning Poker is a signal to discuss assumptions and hidden complexity, ultimately improving shared understanding before re-estimating.
What is velocity in Agile planning?
Answer: The average number of story points a team completes per sprint
Velocity is the average amount of work (measured in story points) a team completes per sprint, used to forecast future delivery capacity.
Which Fibonacci-like sequence is most commonly used in Agile story point estimation?
Answer: 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21
The Fibonacci-like sequence (1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21) is used because larger gaps between numbers reflect the increasing uncertainty in estimating larger items.
What is the 'Definition of Ready' (DoR) in Agile planning?
Answer: A set of criteria that a backlog item must meet before the team can pull it into a sprint
The Definition of Ready defines the criteria a user story must meet — such as being well-understood, sized, and testable — before it can be brought into sprint planning.
During sprint planning, who is ultimately responsible for selecting how much work the team commits to?
Answer: The Development Team, based on their capacity and past velocity
The Development Team owns the commitment because they best understand their capacity and the technical complexity involved in completing the work.
What is the main benefit of using relative estimation over absolute (hour-based) estimation in Agile?
Answer: It reduces psychological anchoring and reflects the natural human ability to compare rather than measure precisely
Relative estimation leverages humans' natural aptitude for comparison, reducing anchoring bias and improving accuracy over time better than hour-based estimates.