Monthly Archives: July 2014

Neil Killick

Neil Killick has been an important part of the NoEstimates discussion for several years. He has presented many conference and user meetup sessions and many are available on-line. I’ve watched all of his presentations that I’ve been able to find, and really appreciate his clarity and ability to keep the focus on making things better in the world of software development.

Neil has over 18 years of experience delivering software in various capacities. He’s a Certified Scrum Master (CSM), Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO) and Certified Scrum Professional/Practitioner (CSP).

Neil Killick Blog- neilkillick.com

Here is a link to his talk on Alternatives to Agile Estimation at Agile Australia

Also…

Vasco Duarte

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I’ve really enjoyed my conversations and interactions with Vasco. His vision and ideas have helped me a great deal in clarifying and expanding my thinking, and I recommend you follow him both in Twitter and at his blog. Vasco has been sharing, talking, and presenting on the subject of “NoEstimates” and related topics for several years and has a deep understanding of the needs of software development management. If you get a chance to see him presenting at a conference or user meet-up I’m sure you will find him interesting at the very least, and you could end up clarifying and expanding your thinking as well.

I highly recommend his blog: Software Development Today

He has many videos from conference presentations, and I’ve enjoyed them all. Here is one you might want to take a look at:

Vasco Duarte at Agile Adria 2014: “How to improve estimates for software: The #NoEstimates view”

Call for links to NoEstimates content

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Hello All –

I have a favor to ask. I’d like your help to gather links to blog posts, presentations, videos (or whatever) that adds to the “No Estimates” conversation.

You can see examples of the sort of thing that I’m looking for by taking a look at the materials I point to on the “Links” page: Links Page

If you are exploring these ideas and have some materials or know of things you think I would be interested in, I would appreciate it if you would let me know by leaving me a note in the comments, or by Tweeting to me.

Thanks for your help!

NOTE:

I am not offering to address all (or any) of the objections to the idea of “No Estimates”. That is for someone else to do. I am interested in conversations, not arguments.

I am not offering to tell you how to “do” NoEstimates in your company.

I am not looking for information on “How to Estimate”, “How to Estimate Better”, “How To Use Estimates To Get People To Talk About Things”, “Why We Must Estimate”, or anything of that sort.

I am not interested in opinions on “Why NoEstimates Doesn’t Work”. If you have a blog you can write about that on your own blog, or you start a blog so you can write about that.

Cheers!

NoEstimates as a starting point

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“#NoEstimates” is a hashtag I use in Twitter to connect up with like-minded people working in software development (business people, managers, developers, “stakeholders”) who are interested in exploring issues that seem to be related to estimates. The hashtag itself is merely a hashtag. A way for interested folks to gather.

The power of the “#NoEstimates” hashtag to fulfill my goal to “connect up with like-minded people” has been phenomenal. I haven’t counted the number of people I’ve been able to meet (both on-line or in person) but I’m pretty certain it is in the hundreds, and perhaps more than a thousand.

My intention here is to maintain this blog as a collection of articles, links to other resources like blogs, articles, videos, conference sessions, and whatever other things I find that are interesting to me in relation to “#NoEstimates”.

To me “No Estimates” is just a one possible starting point – it just happens to be one that has gotten a lot of attention. There are many other possible starting points about things that could be better in the world of software development. It is not my intention to cover those things here. If they come up, I’ll try to point them out, but it isn’t my focus for this blog.

Overall, I think that working in the world of software development can be much better than what most people experience. I love programming software, and I love working with teams to create great projects that deliver a lot of value and usefulness. In a larger sense, I want to work in an industry where people can excel at their work, and in their lives. I think the software development industry can be that way.

Cheers!