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Does a Product Owner/Business analyst estimate efforts required to write a story in advance?

Shikha Kamra

I am a Product Owner in an agile project. I was asked to log my efforts in JIRA story tickets, for the time I spent in analysing and writing a story. This is something possible, although I am not sure if POs do that?

I was also asked to Estimate the time required to analyse or write a story. This sounds impossible to me, because the whole idea of writing stories is to convert a requirement into a quantifiable piece. Before it is done, how can one estimate efforts required to quantify something?

Comments

Troy Spetz_46oct3

We use JIRA 8.3.X and I work as a Agile/Scrum Product Owner.

I've never been asked to log stories about my own work.

My work is considered 'overhead' to ensure that the Development/Test team remain focussed and productive during their sprints.

During Sprint Planning, the Development do provide Story Points per JIRA issue. And, using a customised, metadata field, the Testers also provide their own Story Points (TEST) estimate for each JIRA issue. (It helps both roles with their sprint work's execution priorities.)

It sounds like you have some 'control freak' management who are trying to make you justify your existence as a PO.

Shikha Kamra

Hey Troy,

Thanks for your reply. I think the reason why I was asked to log my efforts as a PO over JIRA was that the management wanted to get the difference between the efforts/costs they quoted to the client for the project and the efforts spent in reality. But here I think a fixed price quote for an agile project is not a good way to begin with in the first place. I am trying to read about the budgeting techniques used for Agile project and would welcome inputs from your experiences too.

I agree that some costs like those of PO's , Scrum Master's and Sales and Marketing teams are best considered as 'overheads' and must be charged separately in the project costs. Any idea how much percentage of the DEV+ Test efforts are usually considered in these 'overhead' costs during budgeting?