The Agile Process - Values Used

The agile process defines two levels of estimation:

• feature level estimate - used to drive release planning and iteration/sprint scheduling
• work level estimate - used to allocate work across team members

See the Feature Estimate and Iteration Planning articles on our website for more detailed information.

In addition, different methodologies call for some differences in what gets tracked. Generally, there are two numeric values that can be used in tracking:

• work effort - how much time was spent
• remaining to do - best estimate of how much work effort remains to complete

VersionOne Attributes

These attributes are used within the VersionOne application and map to the agile process values.

Estimate (aka Story, Requirement or Backlog Estimate) - this is the feature level estimate; it is used in velocity calculations, scope values and feature level burndowns

Planned Estimate - a copy of the initial value entered in the Estimate field; not used in reporting or rollups

Detail Estimate - this is the work level estimate that can be defined at the feature, task or test level; it is used to allocate work to various team members

Effort - incremental entry of the work effort, typically entered daily

Done - accumulation of work effort over time for a task, test, feature or rolled up within a project

To Do - the remaining to do estimate as of the last update

What Gets Entered When?

Process Step	Attribute	What is Done
Feature Planning	Estimate	establish estimate value
	Planned Estimate	defaulted by system = initial Estimate value (when ented on Add/Edit pages)
Iteration/Sprint Planning	Detail Estimate	establish estimate value
	To Do	defaulted by system = Detail Estimate (when ented on Add/Edit pages)
Tracking	Effort	enter work effort since last update
	Done	system accumulates total
	To Do	enter estimate of remaining work