Tasking Sessions

Estimating a story card accurately is always a difficult task. We can be close to reality but never accurate. We should look at our estimates as a variable.

In our project, we developers discuss with analysts about a storycard, and come up with some high level tasks to complete that story card. Looking at those tasks we estimate ideal days (or some other unit system) to complete the story card. To be honest, sometimes we have been awfully off our estimation. Some members in our team question why to waste our time doing tasking when we anyhow go wrong with our estimates whether we task out our stories or not. I totally accept to this argument, by tasking our story we will never get our estimates right. It could be closer to reality but not right("estimates right" sounds like an oxymoron). But (pardon my English) task of "tasking" is not just meant for estimating our story cards but it has many other benefits too. It helps,

1) To get better understanding about our story card
Tasking session allows (or forces) developers and analysts to look a little closer at the story cards. As analysts are right there, it is easy for developers to ask questions about some ambiguous parts in story cards.

2) To have a domain discussion
Tasking session makes developers and analysts to have domain discussion. Developers and analysts, when tasking can see if there is any domain model change for example adding a new domain object

3) To knowledge transfer to new developers.
By involving in tasking sessions, new developers will be able to understand more about why and what needs to be done for a story card.

4) To find some gaps in analysis
Tasking forces developers to have more understanding about a story card. So developers tend to ask more questions to Analysts. When answering to developers' questions, analysts will be able to find some scenarios he/she never thought about before or some gaps in story card.

5) To find whether a story is too big
Tasking gives us a better idea about the size of the story. So it will be easy for analysts and management team to decide whether to break the story into two or more manageable stories.

So I feel "tasking" is a beneficial activity in software development.