This email is a reminder and update regarding meeting five of the Christchurch Agile Professionals Network.

The 2007 Chaos report from the Standish Group reported that 65% of IT projects either failed or were over time and/or budget. They listed accurate software estimation as a key factor in the success of software projects. This is a clear indicator that software estimation is both a challenging and critical activity.

To date the most successful method of software estimation involves experts working together in teams, using techniques like Wideband Delphi, and Planning Poker, coupled with short development iterations and regular customer feedback.

What makes these teams collectively intelligent? And why do some succeed where others fail? This talk looks at the human factors in software estimation, and their impact on the quality of software estimates. The following topics will be covered...

• Software Estimation – Why is it hard? And why is it important?
• Software Estimates – What do they mean? And what are they?
• Emotion, Flow, Framing, and Motivation – What are the real costs of underestimation, and schedule compression?
• Collective Intelligence - What is it? How to create it? And what are the potential problems?
• Cognitive Biases - What are they? And how do we reduce their impact on estimates?
• Personality Biases - Why do engineers & developers like details, and not like ambiguity? And how does this impact estimation quality?
• Communication – How do you communicate estimates to stakeholders?

Speaker: Cameron McEwing, BE (Hons 1), Certified Scrum Master. 

Date: Thursday 27 May 2010 5.00 to 6.30 pm 

Place: Clarus, Level 1, LeftClick House, cnr Lichfield &Madras Streets, Christchurch. Map here 

Who:  All welcome. Gold coin donation for drinks and catering.

To register for this event, please click here.