There has been a lot of debate within the business world about the merits of time sheets. Some think tracking hours is an important metric while others feel that they are a waste of time. In the Scrum community there is a similar debate: should the team use points or hours when estimating backlog items?
Scrum Inc. recommends using points because hours are problematic on a number of levels. One difficulty when estimating in hours is that time measures input, and Scrum is concerned about output. We use a variety of examples to illustrate this, but two recent news headlines drive the points home, so to speak.
The first story surfaced several weeks ago and involves the big law firm, DLA Piper. In an effort to collect fees, the firm sued a client. The client refuted the billing. During the ensuing discovery process a number of incriminating e-mails surfaced revealed the lawyers on the project overstaffed and had the team performing gratuitous tasks:
“Now Vince has random people working full time on random research projects in standard ‘churn that bill, baby!’ mode... That bill shall know no limits.”
The second example involves healthcare. This week a case study released in The Journal of the American Medical Association showed how medical errors actually increased one hospital group’s bottom line. A mistake like forgetting to remove a gauze pad from a patient during surgery results in further interventions and longer hospital stays, forcing insurers to cover costs created by the hospital’s own mistakes.
Much of the outrage involving these stories focuses on ethical lapses. Let’s not forget bloating time sheets is not only is it unethical, it is poor business.
If the lawyers had instead focused on the quality of their work (the output in this case) and not billable hours, the client, rather than suing them, would have gladly paid the bill. The business value is in serving the client’s needs, not in wasteful or fabricated services. For the hospital group business value is derived from healing people and not from long hospital stays and unnecessary surgeries. This is why many efforts to reign in healthcare costs focus on quality of outcome rather than quantity of care given.
Both industries have business models that measure input (billable hours or number of services provided) rather than outcome and both professions are currently in crisis. Business probably won’t improve until they start to focus on quality of outcome rather than quantity of input.
Let’s not forget that time is finite, another problem with estimating in hours. After all, there is a reason lawyers and doctors sometimes work upwards of 100 hours a week. If their business models incentivized quality of outcome, doctors and lawyers could simply improve their efficiency, make the same amount of money working a lot less.
Work less! Estimate in points.
Learn more about how using Points can vastly improve your Scrum in our April Webinar.
-- Joel Riddle
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