Comparison of Development Speeds Across Several Backlogs

In this post I take advantage of my findings in incorporating variability in time taken to finish stories based on their complexity estimates (1-point vs 2-points). I would like to see how different backlogs at Lingraphica compare in terms of quickly getting 1-point and 2-point stories done.

Just for reference, members of the Lingraphica Product Development team aimed for a maximum of half-a-day for 1-pointer stories and a maximum of a full day for 2-pointer stories. For more complex stories, they’re usually broken down into simpler stories. I would like to examine the stories that took longer than estimated. Below I list the stories that took longer than expected so that we as a team could, in the future, analyze what we could improve upon, so that we could give better estimates.

Product Development

1-Pointers

Name	Elapsed
Hitting “Publish” should make a JSON request to the WP site	16
Pass the user id to the article page from the wordpress site.	14
It should not be previewable if article saved but sound or image are not pre…	13
TalkPath ADL menus activity on firefox doesn’t accept answer clicks	11
Server validation messages should be displayed in the notice at the top of t…	10
Upon Successfully creating a PWA account, drop the cookie in the browser to …	10
Selecting an “Individual/Caregiver” and submitting the form with required fi…	10
Server validation messages should be displayed in the notice at the top of t…	8
Upon successfully creating an account drop the cookie in the browser to sign…	8
Display a spinner until the sound actually starts to play.	7
Prep work for adding the new CEU course to website	7
Remove Title from Article	7
Add Sound for the question on the Edit Question page	7
Add Article Time column to Editor as non-required field	6
Add required field validations for CEU fields	6
Show the SLP details for clients in the admin page on the therapy site	6
Demo videos should be supported on Firefxo	5
Styling on the navigation bar	5
Allow admin to unlink the client from the SLP	5
Create Account form should display the validation messages under the field f…	5
Therapy application should be able to launch a new session for the user when…	5

2-Pointers

2-pointer distribution from Product Development

Name	Elapsed
Create the user creation flow in Wordpress	62
Test out the question for all the 20 articles in the staging environment	52
Implement SSO on talkpathnews staging website.	27
TPN app should have the correct icon and splash screen when its launched	26
After the article is finished speaking, display the questions where the imag…	26
Generate Male and Female sounds for all the text to be used in the Spanish a…	25
Show alert message when there is no connection to the internet	21
Design approaches for making the article page on TPN responsive.	20
SPIKE : Figure out how we can convert images, sounds and videos to different…	19
Create a new web-app for VOA	19
Create Javascript file that submits the Sign-In request to therapy applicati…	17
Show the user a login popup when they try to read the article without signin…	16
Playback buttons should appear in a bottom floating button bar	13
A request to “Create Article” endpoint will create the article on news-web-app	13
Add MixPanel tracking to “Learn More” links on pages	12
Speak button that plays all of the sounds for both Question and Answer choices	10
Add Sound to Article in Editor	9
Putting in a bad hint sentence location breaks Preview sounds	9

SGDs

1-Pointers

Name	Elapsed
Make the text and size of window for Type and Talk bigger	27
Create Accounts for Loaner devices	22
Make the “Icon/Text Options” settings dialog behavior on Setting screen simi…	21
Add an option within the language system that allows the user to attach a ac…	21
Launch TPN activity from the Language system.	19
Incorporate the changes made for Dell in the 1.3.0 release.	19
Voice recording for TPN and TPT to be used in SGDs	18
Test voice button should speak spanish text for spanish voices.	16
Make the communication hub the Home Activity on kiosked devices	16
Quick fire screen in the app	14
Adding a node to the tree provides the user with 2 options	14
Create a new icon for the communication hub and Bluetooth	13
Add a new type of Card to the tree called Launcher Card	12
Modify “No internet connection” messaging for TPN with marketing input	12
Add TalkPath Therapy , TalkPath News and TalkPath Live icons to the tree.	12
Figure out styling for the choose voice settings screen	11
Finalize the Email and IM message that is shown to the user when they naviga…	10
Create the Help Video and update the dropbox directory - Communication Hub	9
Hub Options setting dialog should have a button to “add more apps”	8
Add “Hub “ icon to the top button bar	6
Add a setting called “Hub Options”	6
Make the selections in the disabled controls stand out	5
Add a new section called Icon and Text Options in settings	5
Handle internet connection when user is on TPN page	5
Add “Hub Options” settings to the settings menu in AllTalk	5
Adjust Speech rate for the Ivona voices.	5

2-Pointers

Name	Elapsed
SPIKE : Investigate speech engines to see if there is a way we can offer mul…	696
Ivona SDK: Incorporate Ivona SDK into TouchTalk	211
Except Email and Trillian, block all other apps with LG App Locker	50
Add support of Kiosk mode for Dell Venue 10 tablet.	41
The AllTalk device should use Loquendo voices (or what was used earlier) whe…	40
Setup Git Repository for storing essentials directory for both AllTalk and T…	33
Global settings to not project the category icons	28
Global settings to not project the category icons	23
Design the display of the Hub screen	20
The lingraphica application should be able to remove the kiosk mode when nee…	19
View the list of SGDObject in the editor database.	17
Allow user to add a new SGDObject to the tree	17
Spike - TTS voice chooser interface	14
Handle no internet connection condition for TalkPath News	14
Ability to add a SGDNode easily to the tree	14
Pressing the Hub button show a list with Email and IM.	13
Allow user to drag nodes to change their placement in the tree	13
TPN and TPT screen should allow the user exit and come back to the Lingraphi…	13
Add a link to the top menu called “SGD Tree”	13
Add parent - proxy validations to logic while adding and deleting nodes.	13
Create SGDNode in the editor	12
Make the interface for “Choose a picture” more user friendly	10
Add Navigation to the settings screen	10

Therapy-App Content

1-Pointers

Name	Elapsed
Compare Common Phrases List to PI form list/ VOA list	231
Daily Upload of recent VOA articles to TPN site	85
Teletherapy Assessment PowerPoint	70
Make content changes to assessment	62
Select tasks from TP to use in Assessment	50
Publish tasks in Paragraph and Sentence detail recall and test in production…	40
Upload all 20 TPN articles to the editor and test	39
Finalize assessment protocol/data collection document	36
Hand match the sounds and publish the tasks if everything makes sense	28
VOA Article Content and Sounds	22
Fill out spreadsheet for target phonemes	21
Target Phoneme Spreadsheet	17
Create 9 questions for screening tool	16
Organize Conversation Page	15
Organize the list of phrases from the PI forms into topics	14
Add last part of assessment to the powerpoint	12
Organize the list of words from PI forms into topics	11
Get list of words requested on PI forms	10
Create new demo videos for multi screen memory and inference	9
Handle apostrophe character for one of the articles	7
Find out how many words exist in the existing SGD tree from the VOA Vocab list	6
Create a spreadsheet with start and end times for sentences in the VOA article	5
Break up “In the news” into separate articles/questions	5
Publish tasks in Categorize items and test in production build	5

2-Pointers

2-pointer distribution from Therapy App Content

Name	Elapsed
Position of the Emerging list vocabulary in SGD	93
Get the recorded sounds generated for the words being added to the device.	42
Digitize the words and phrases requested in the PI forms	39
New words and phrases for FastTalk	24
Get images created for all the new words in the emerging vocabulary list.	22
Review word and phrase requests from PI forms to determine what can be added…	20
Revamp the Talking page	16
Publish the tasks and test the build for Using Calendars	10

Website Development

1-Pointers

Name	Elapsed
TalkPath News Social Images	23
Add VA landing page	12
Implement map and select color scheme	9
Generate new list of Poster Requesters from aphasia.com	7
Add MixPanel tracking to Manual PDF download on devices pages of aphasia.com	5
Set up ACE Program site webserver	5

2-Pointers

2-pointer distribution from Website Development

Name	Elapsed
Add LIVE CHAT feature to TalkPath Live website	75
Investigate a new rotating slider	53
Pop-Up window on aphasia.com for the eBook	49
Add new pages to top menu	28
Post all the help videos on the ace video blog	20
Add “Resources for this Post” sidebar item to post pages	13

1-Pointers (Aggregate)

Website Development is the most consistent in delivering 1-pointers under 4 hours (86.3%), followed by Product Development (73.4%), SGDs (70.7%), and Therapy App Content (35.1%). I wonder why Therapy App Content is so much more different than the rest.

I would say that our 1-pointer estimates for most of the time, with the exception of our 1-pointers in Therapy App Content, are good estimates as most of the time they are quite over 50%.

2-Pointers (Aggregate)

Developers in Product Development are the most consistent performers, able to get 56.5% under 8 hours, although the performance is only a little bit greater than half. SGDs follow next (48.9%), then Website Development (45.5%), and finally, Therapy App Content (42.9%).

It’s interesting here that only Product Development has been able to go over 50%. Most are a little less than 50%. This could mean that we are not breaking down stories enough into 1-pointers. It’s also possible that a lot of the things we encounter are just difficult and a lot more complex than expected.

Conclusion

I think we as a whole team could investigate how to improve 2-pointer estimates so that they are more representative. Maybe we should start incorporating points higher than 2-pointers so that most 2-pointers do honor the under 8-hours of work that we strive for. However, that may be easier said than done. It’s very likely that there might be just too many unforeseen complications in software development. In the process of actually doing the stories, when we actually face the complexities especially in our 2-pointer stories, it might be better to dynamically split the stories further. This would probably solve the issue of the 2-pointers not being under 8 hours. By breaking down the story into smaller ones when in the process of working, we can ensure that 2-pointers could stay closer to the 8 hours deadline. The problem, with this approach, however is that the estimate in the beginning, prior to actually doing the work, still is an underestimate.

I don’t have a perfect answer to solving this estimation problem, but at least I’ve started gathering the data so that we could look into the stories that actually took really long. Maybe there are patterns in the data that are shared by these stories. Definitely something to look up in the future.