Browsing by Subject "käyttäjätarinapisteytys (Story Point)"

Estimation is considered as an essential part of the software engineering project. Lately on the internet there have been discussions about the viability of estimation in software projects with a keyword ''NoEstimates''. The “members” of the NoEstimates movement are creating content about e.g., is estimation always necessary, and what is the “best practice” for estimation. At the time of this thesis relative estimation (Story Points) was considered as the best practice for estimation in the agile community and at the University of Helsinki. The aim of this thesis is to find answers to the questions: is estimation always necessary in software projects, and is there any other viable way to do estimation than relative and absolute estimation methods. In this thesis a literature review and a semi-structured interview was used as a main research methods. The main source for finding the new viable estimation method is the content made by the NoEstimates movement. In addition five software engineering professionals were interviewed for this thesis to get information about currently used estimation methods in software companies, and opinions about estimation methods and estimation in general. The conclusion of this study is that the estimation is almost always an essential part of the software engineering project. Relative estimation is rarely used in Finnish software companies even so it is considered as the best practice. According to this study, the most commonly used estimation method in software companies in Finland is absolute estimation. In this thesis there is an introduction to a rarely mentioned estimation method outside of the NoEstimation context. The method is named “item counting method” and it looks like to be at least a viable addition to the estimation toolbox.