An agile team is using an affinity estimating technique where the scrum master presents the team with example user stories that are familiar to the team, and they are categorized as small, medium, and large.
The scrum master then reads out the new user stories that should be developed on the project, and for each user story requests that the team members do which of the following?
A. Assign the user story a size from the Fibonacci series.
B. Assign the user story a size that is most similar to one of the example user stories.
C. Ask team members to rank the relative importance of the user story.
D. Assess the effort, complexity, difficulty, and risk of the user story.
HINT: A synonym for "affinity" is "similarity".
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Answer and explanation:
The correct answer is B.
One application of affinity estimation is to compare the sizes of the user stories that should be developed on the project to the sizes of example user stories (exemplars), which are familiar to the team.
When the team members have a collection of exemplars and the actual user stories to be developed, they are trying to answer the question "Which of the exemplars is the actual user story most like?" This technique is called 'affinity analysis' because the team is looking to see how things are alike rather than how they are different.
Details for each option:
A. Incorrect. Since the scrum master has already provided the team with the examples of small, medium, and large user stories, it would be confusing to introduce another sizing scale using the Fobonacci series.
B. Correct. Although not very precise, the goal of affinity extimating is to find the closest size. Always look for the answer choice which is the best among the others.
C. Incorrect. In affinity estimating, the team members do not rank the stories relative to each other in terms of importance. Rather, they are trying to find which of the example user stories is the most similar to the one that has just been read out. One could estimate all the stories by relative size, but since the scrum master presented examples for small, medium, and large user stories, relative sizing would not make sense.
D. Incorrect. In the scenario described, the scrum master is facilitating a discussion about the size of the user stories, implying that the team is requested to do affinity estimating. Affinity estimating is about sizing rather than effort, complexity, difficulty, or risk of the user story.
Reference: Exploring Scrum: The Fundamentals, Second Edition, Dan Rawsthorne with Doug Shimp, 2013, Affinity Analysis
