Here are some fun estimation exercises for teams starting in Agile or for teams that want practice in relative estimation.
Exercise 1: Making a Fruit Salad
Your team has been tasked to make a fruit salad and these are the types of fruits that need to be cut and prepared:
- Pineapple
- Banana
- Grape
- Orange
- Strawberry
Compare these fruits and estimate the relative size of each fruit. List from smallest size to largest size.
Talking points after the exercise:
- If the team was tasked to determine how long it would take to cut each fruit, would it have taken more time to estimate or not?
- If there are multiple teams doing this exercise, look at the result for each team, are they similar?
- Would it be easy to add another piece of fruit such as Apple to the list and be able to estimate the size?
Exercise 2: Animals
Compare and estimate the relative size of each of these animals using the Fibonacci series (0, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55). Guideline Dog = 2, Horse = 5.
- Lion
- Horse
- Cow
- Tiger
- Zebra
- Pig
- Elephant
- Rat
- Sheep
- Dog
- Snake
Talking points after the exercise:
- Were there disagreements on sizing and how did the team resolve them?
- Were some animals similar in sizing? Did the team use a technique to group animals of similar size together first and then determine the number in Fibonacci (size)? If not, would this technique be useful?
- Would it be easy to add another animal such as Cat to the list and be able to estimate the size?
- If there are multiple teams doing this exercise, look at the result for each team, are they similar?