Let's Build an Airport

Context

Estimating a handful of features is hard enough; estimating a project the size of an airport terminal — hundreds of interdependent parts — seems harder still. The session opens with the counterintuitive claim that the opposite is true: a large product's many small pieces average out, which is what makes it more predictable to estimate than a handful of big, uncertain ones.

The argument

A three-step method: gather the information a team actually needs before sizing anything, break the work down from high-level epics into estimable stories, then size complexity and effort together as a team rather than have one person guess alone. First given at UX Camp West 2016 in Cologne, then repeated internally at MRM//McCann.

A companion write-up, with the full method and a downloadable estimation spreadsheet: Let's Build an Airport (onygo.org).