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Domain V. Adaptive Planning

Domain V. Adaptive Planning

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 Question Level Mark
Which of the following is the main benefit of estimating ideal time rather than
estimating elapsed time for user stories?

Agile team members who worked together on a few projects in the past, are using
story points to estimate the level of effort required to complete the user stories on
their new project. What is the most appropriate approach for the team to take to
estimate the first user story?

Besides using story points to estimate the relative size of a user story, how else may
an agile team estimate user story size?

During an iteration planning meeting, a team member is having difficulty estimating

the work required for a task because it will involve using technology not familiar to
the team. The use of this technology also represents a potential risk to the project if
the approach fails. What should the team do to determine this unknown impact?

Halfway through an iteration, a product owner receives a request for a new feature
from a key stakeholder that would save the company a lot of money. The product
owner asks the team to incorporate this feature in the current iteration. What
should the team do first?

A product owner followed the INVEST mnemonic while writing user stories for the
release. During the first sprint planning meeting, the agile team determined that
one high priority user story would not be completed in the upcoming sprint due to
its size. What is the best action for the team to take in this situation?

During iteration planning, the product owner meets with the project stakeholders
to determine the criteria by which a given product backlog item will be judged as a
success or failure by the project stakeholders so the product owner can effectively
communicate these criteria to the development team. What will be the output of
this discussion?

Which of the following is the Agile view on detailed cost estimates for projects with
high degrees of uncertainty or those where the scope is not yet fully defined?
In what sequence would the following activities typically take place on an agile
project before the first iteration starts?

A scrum team together with the other project stakeholders are holding a half-day
release planning meeting to determine the number of sprint required to release an
initial product that will contain a subset of the highest value user stories. Which of
the following must the project have to achieve the stated goal of the meeting?

A couple of days before the end of the current iteration, the last in the next release,
the team informs the product owner that they will be unable to finish two user
stories, story A and story B that are part of the iteration goal. The team might be
able to complete user story A in the time left but most likely will need an additional
week to complete story B. Given that user story B has a higher priority, what action
should be taken by the team in this situation?

An agile team is arguing about backlog prioritization. How should an agile

practitioner respond?

Which of the following refers to the progressive elaboration of project requirements

and the ongoing activity in which the team collaboratively reviews, updates, and
writes requirements to satisfy the needs of the customer request?

If a team has a velocity of 20 story points and there are 83 story points remaining in
the backlog and excluding all other potential constraints like increased scope, how
many iterations should it take for the project team to complete the remaining story
points?

As a developer on the agile team, Greg is beginning development on a task. Greg is

at the task board and must place the task card in the correct column of the task
board to update everyone of its status. In which column should Greg place the task
card?

In the middle of an iteration, a developer has realized that the user story they have
been working on was underestimated for its complexity. Therefore, a developer
cannot complete it within the current iteration. What should the developer do?
During a daily standup meeting, the scrum master goes from one team member to
another questioning each one on the work they have accomplished since the last
meeting and asking questions relating to technical aspects of the work. The standup
lasts for almost forty minutes. Which of the following best describes this situation?

Customer requirements for the new application to be developed by the agile team,
limit the technology choices to two approaches with which the team is not familiar.
What would help the team determine the best choice to make?

An agile coach suggests to use a wideband Delphi technique to gather estimates

from the team members. How would the team use such an approach?

Often times during release planning user stories are categorized and organized by
theme. Which of the following agile artifact is often used to show organization and
progress of user stories by theme?

When grooming and prioritizing the user stories in the product backlog, which of
the following ranking approaches can be used?

An agile team is planning their new project and agreed on iteration length of two
weeks. How should the team decide on how many user stories can they complete in
their first iteration?

During an estimation meeting, the team was unable to reach consensus about the
level of effort required to implement a high priority very complex feature with many
technical unknowns. What is the best way to handle this situation?
When the team lead was asked how the team intended to mitigate the risk
associated with their upcoming high-risk project, the team lead replied that the
team would do its best fast during the initial sprints. What did the team lead mean
by that?

Which team member should lead or facilitate the sprint review?

A team has several costly risks which may soon arise on a project. What is the best
way for the team to communicate these risks so they can be addressed as
impediments to progress?

As project manager, David needs to facilitate a release plan meeting. What should
David share and discuss in detail with the project team?

An agile coach notices that the team is not engaged in the daily standup meetings.
Some others are checking their cee phone during the meetings. What should the
agile coach do?

During the sprint planning meeting, an issue with one of the user stories already
included in the sprint backlog was found. As a result, the user story has been
removed from the sprint backlog, and the sprint has been successfully completed.
However, at the retrospective meeting, an agile practitioner mentioned that the
user story has been removed from the sprint backlog for the wrong reason. What
reason did the agile practitioner most likely mention?

An agile practitioner is asked by the project sponsor to provide the number of

hours it would take the team to build a new software application. As an
experienced software developer intimately familiar with agile methodologies,
the agile practitioner steers the conversation towards relative sizing and away
from time estimating. How does relative sizing make use of story points?

When estimating the relative work effort to develop user stories, agile teams
have both ideal days and story points as a method for estimation. What
should agile teams be weary of doing with these methods?
The product owner wants to assign users stories for the next iteration. The
customer tells the product owner which user stories hold the highest value,
while the product owner indicates which have the highest risk level and
dependencies on other user stories. By the end of the meeting, they have a
prioritized list of user stories in the product backlog, the most important of
which will be discussed in the next iteration planning meeting. What process
have the product owner and the customer just performed?

During a daily standup meeting, a software developer suggested a change to

the database design, and he then asked a question about configuring the
database. The tester reported her research and started to discuss the pros
and cons of using a particular automated testing tool. Another team member
reported having to wait for the delivery of hardware and equipment to
complete performance testing. Which discussion topic was appropriate for a
daily standup meeting?

Agile approaches do not require developing a formal scope management

plan or a WBS. In Agile projects, which of the following makes up the high-
level project scope?
An agile project manager and the business sponsor were discussing the need
for an iteration zero for the new project that was to be initiated. Which of the
following is an activity commonly performed during iteration zero?

When a user story is estimated to be 0 story points, what does it indicate?

An experienced scrum master introduces the newly hired scrum team

members to the scrum guide. The scrum master explains that agile teams are
typically concerned with what level of planning?
Which of the following might an agile development team do to maximize the
value delivered to the customer?

An engineering team works closely with the marketing team on a project.

Midway through an iteration, a new feature is introduced by the product
owner that requires a big architectural change in the code. What should the
team do first?
An organization has two teams in different areas of the country. The
organization is very concerned about a risk from a natural disaster. How
should an agile practitioner respond to this risk?

During the sprint planning meeting, an agile team is struggling with some of
the user stories that they will have to develop since the user stories are
insufficient in detail. Which of the following actions propriate for the team?
Agile team members are estimating how long it would take to develop
features for a new application without being overly concerned about
accuracy. A new team member is concerned that a lack of planning now
would cause scheduling problems later on. What is the advice that the agile
practitioner can give to this new member on agile sizing and estimating the
project duration?

On a burndown chart, two series are typically charted. Select the response
that lists those two series (also referred to as lines).

A software developer creating a crowd-funded role-playing smartphone game

is also a partner in the company. This developer loses a lot of time that
should be dedicated to developing the software due to constant task
switching because he must also handle daily marketing and fundraising
updates to the project‚ sponsors. Which of the following best describes how
task switching affects the agile development process?

Greg is ready to select another task for execution in the current iteration. He
reviews the task and realizes that the estimated time on the task card is most
likely too low. What should Greg do?

During a sprint planning meeting, the scrum team is arguing over 115 story
points’ worth of user stories that the product owner is pushing to be
completed in the upcoming sprint. However, the development team‚ average
velocity is only 100 story points. Who makes the final decision on how many
story points will be targeted for completion during a sprint?

Agile project stakeholders are discussing the minimal viable product for their
upcoming project. They arranged user stories on a white board using sticky
notes by placing the essential functions from left to right across the top of the
matrix, and by descending order of priority from top to bottom. Which of the
following visual tool did the project stakeholders use?
In a recent iteration, an agile team completed 15 user stories out of 20
planned. The project stakeholders were unhappy and demanded answers.
The team members responded that they had to do the routine work of
supporting prior releases which caused them to miss the iteration goal.
Should the routine work of supporting prior releases be included in the
iteration?

An agile coach is asked to help a team estimate user stories, and the team is
considering using epics. Which of the following might the agile coach tell the
team regarding the use of epics?

An agile practitioner is looking for a quick way to estimate the relative size of
a user story. The practitioner is looking for a simple and easy gross
estimation technique to use with stakeholders and customers to provide a
rough estimate of user story size. Which approach would be the best choice
for the agile practitioner use?
Answer Answer Option A
D Ideal time, measured in
hours, is more accurate
than elapsed time which
is usually measured in
days.
C Play the planning poker
game
C Using exact time-boxing
A Conduct a spike
C Talk directly to the
stakeholder to confirm
that the feature will
indeed save a lot of
money
B Postpone the user story
to the second sprint
because the team will
have more experience
after running the first one
B A groomed backlog
A Detailed cost estimates
are reserved for short-
term planning horizons.
Answer Option B Answer Option C
Ideal time estimation It is usually impossible to
allows Agile teams to estimate a user story size
individually size user in elapsed time.
stories.
Groom the product Select a medium-sized
backlog user story
Using ideal velocity Using ideal days
Have the team swarm the Conduct an interruption
task
Ask the agile leader for Tell the product owner
direction that other features would
not be developed by
including this new feature
Write replacement user Rewrite the user story,
stories such that provides but without using the
some level of end-to-end INVEST mnemonic
functionality
Conditions of satisfaction Working agreements
Agile projects do not Detailed cost estimates
involve detailed cost for the project are
estimates due to the determined early but
absence of a scope adjusted as new
baseline. information becomes
available.
D Determine velocity, Determine velocity, Schedule the work,
schedule the work, estimate size, schedule estimate size, determine
estimate size the work velocity

A A prioritized list of user A story map The target date for the
stories release

C Work on user story A first Extend the iteration length Have the product owner
since it likely can be in order to finish both determine what should be
completed with the time stories A and B done and follow their
left in the iteration instructions

A Indicate that prioritization Indicate that the Indicate that prioritization

is an ongoing process developers choose the is only the
through the development priority of the stories customer‚ responsibility
cycle

B Root cause analysis Backlog refinement Conditions of satisfaction

determination

B 4 5 6

B Done In progress Ready for testing

B Inform the product owner Suggest to slice the user Ask the teammates to
at the next daily standup story swarm on the story
B The team is The scrum master is from The scrum master is well
inexperienced and lacks a more traditional project trained and experienced
confidence, requiring the management background, and is conducting the
scrum master to spend is attempting to manage daily scrum meeting in a
more time gathering the team using a more proactive manner that is
information from the traditional approach, and likely to increase project
individual team members does not have a solid success
understanding of agile
principles

D Prototyping Exploratory testing A risk-based spike

C The team improves buy-in The team maximizes the The team repeats the
through collaboration after halo effect by giving extra estimation process
openly voting the best weight to the opinion of several times and provide
estimate the senior team members reasoning for their
estimates between each
round to reach consensus

D Theme parking garage Story theme chart Theme runway

A Ranking with value Ranking with story size Ranking with sprint size
including the cost of delay divided by the number of divided by the number of
divided by duration. sprints. sprints.

D Use velocity of the other Do not commit to any Commit to some number
teams who developed number of user stories for of user stories and, if
similar project in their the first iteration unable to complete them,
organization extend iteration length as
needed

A Allow time for spike to be Have the team leader Remove the feature from
performed estimate the effort for the the backlog until it can be
feature discussed with the
product owner
C It is better to fail at the
beginning of the project
rather than at the end in
order for the company to
save some money
C Scrum master
D Risk management plan
A The product vision
B Escalate to the project
sponsor
C Sliced a compound user
story because it cannot
be completed in one
sprint
C Story points attempt to
define work effort, such
as determining hours for
each in an iteration
C Forgetting to convert both Using ideal days too early Using both estimate
methods into story in a project
velocity for a common
basis of estimation
The team should develop Fast failure in the
the most difficult features beginning of the project
first, thus forcing an early allows the team to spot
failure, to figure out problems early and try to
possible solution sooner solve them as soon as
possible
Executive sponsor Product owner
Risk registers Burndown charts
The project vision The release and iteration
vision
Coach the team on the Replace the unengaged
importance of the daily team members
standup
Sliced a complex user Removed a user story
story because it cannot because the scrum
be completed in one master thought the team
sprint overcommitted
Story points use lines-of- Story points define a unit
code and function-points of work size, and are
for early estimates used to compare how
large one story is with
respect to another
methods simultaneously
in a project.
A Backlog refinement Backlog filtering Minimal viable product

B Asking a question about Waiting for hardware and Suggesting a change to

configuring the database equipment to complete the database design
performance testing

C Scope statement Release plan Product backlog

B Developing the product Setting up an initial Conducting a spike

product backlog

A That the user story takes That the user story has That the user story costs
minimal effort to design, no value. 0 points.
build, and test.
A Sprint Visioning and chartering Roadmap

C Change the priority of Cancel a sprint due to Adjust the size of the
items in the product changes in technology other user stories in the
backlog backlog
B Meet with the engineering Save this item for the next Approve the change
team iteration

D Communicate about the Add another team in a Aim for an increased

risk often in daily standup different location velocity to get more work
meetings done before the risk
occurs
C Demonstrating the Ensuring that all user Discussing each user
product increment to the stories are fully story with the appropriate
product owner elaborated before stakeholders
including them in the
product backlog
B The project duration can Once the velocity is Project duration is
be determined by adding established, the total determined using bottom-
the number of story points amount of story points up estimating by adding
completed by the team in divided by velocity will up the duration of the
each iteration. determine the project tasks comprising the user
duration stories

C The net and gross work The estimated and ideal The actual and ideal work
remaining work remaining remaining

B Task switching is a core Task switching is Task switching is

component of Kanban to detrimental because it beneficial because if you
keep work in progress causes project team become blocked on one
moving in a pull system members to lose focus on task you can switch to
their assigned tasks another

A Update the time on the Deal with the minor Remove the card from the
task card as soon as inconsistency in private task board and place it in
possible and work overtime to the product backlog
keep the iteration on
schedule

C The technical lead The product owner The development team

C Regression backlog plan Prioritized product Story map

backlog
C It depends on how many Yes, routine work of Yes, routine work of
user stories have to be supporting prior releases supporting prior releases
removed by including the should be included, but should be included in the
work of supporting prior only in iteration Zero. iteration
releases

A Epics can reduce the Epics are required for all Epics should be used for
amount of time a team features that are to be features that stakeholders
spends estimating built in the near future are certain they want

A T-shirt sizing Simple voting Fist-of-five

 Answer Option D
It is almost always far
easier and accurate to
predict the duration of an
event in ideal time than in
elapsed time.

Use affinity estimating

Using heuristics

Conduct exploratory
testing

Incorporate the new

feature immediately

Proceed as usual, since

the user story was written
using INVEST mnemonic

A product increments

Agile projects do not

involve detailed cost
estimates due to frequent
changes.
Estimate size, determine
velocity, schedule the
work

A consensus among all

stakeholders

Extend the iteration by a

week as an exception
since it is the last one in
this release

Stop the conflict

immediately as conflict is
bad for team performance

Process mapping

To do

Move on to a story that

can be completed
The scrum master has
combined the daily scrum
meeting and the sprint
retrospective meeting

An architectural spike

The team must estimate

the entire project without
breaking it into smaller
chunks

Parking lot chart

Ranking with story size

multiplied with the number
of team members.

Use the time estimated

for each user story and
the “real time”
available for development
during the iteration length

Assign the feature the

highest value of story
points identified in a
planning poker session
Since the project has a
high risk of failure, it is
better to fail soon so that
the team can start
working on a different
project

External facilitator

Daily standup meetings

The milestone exit criteria

Bring this issue up in the

next daily standup
meeting

Removed a user story

because it has
interdependencies with
other user stories

Story points overestimate

workloads, especially as
teams grow in size,
requiring less of team
members to estimate user
stories

Using story points too

early in a project
Kano analysis

Discussing the pros and

cons of using automated
testing tool

Burndown chart

Hiring new team

members for the project

That the user story is an

impediment to progress.

Release

Change the length of an

iteration

Meet with the marketing

team

Use project buffers

Breaking down the user

stories into epics
To determine the project
duration, velocity should
be calculated prior to the
first iteration

The actual and net work

remaining

Task switching in agile

environments allows you
to deliver constant value
because each feature can
progress incrementally

Select a different user

story

The project manager

Product roadmap
No, routine work of
supporting prior release
should not be included in
the iteration

Epics allow agile teams to

break down big tasks into
smaller user stories and
features

Monopoly money
 Notes
Ideal time is the amount of time that something takes when stripped of all peripheral
activities. Elapsed time is the amount of time from the start to finish of an activity. It is
almost always far easier and accurate to predict the duration of an event in ideal time
than in elapsed time. [Cohn, M., 2006. Agile Estimating and Planning. 1st ed.
Massachusetts: Pearson Education. Page 43]

It is easier to start with a medium rather than extremes (e.g. smallest or largest) since
the team does not have estimates yet for all user stories.

Instead of using story points, agile teams may estimate the relative sizes of user stories
using ideal days. Ideal days represents the amount of days - uninterrupted by meetings,
personal life, non-working days, or any other delays, obstacles or distractions - that it
would take a single person to build, test, and release the user story, relative to other
user stories in the backlog. [Agile Estimating and Planning. Mike Cohn.]

A spike and is performed specifically to gain knowledge or answer a question. A spike is

a time boxed effort devoted to exploring an approach, investigating an issue, or a
project risk.

Typically, changes are not incorporated halfway through an iteration. However, as an

exception, under unusual circumstances, the scope may be clarified and re-negotiated
between the product owner and the development team. However, the team should not
incorporate the new feature right away, but rather indicate to the product owner that
other features would not be developed by including this new feature.

Although not ideal, writing replacement user stories would allow the project team to
deliver value to the customer.

Condition of satisfaction are specific to a given backlog item and define what must be
true for that product backlog item to be considered done.

Agile projects with high degrees of uncertainty or those where the scope is not yet fully
defined may not benefit from detailed cost calculations for the entire project due to
frequent changes. However, detailed costs are estimated for short-term planning
horizons in a just-in-time fashion. [Agile Practice Guide, 1st edition, Page 92]
To plan their work before the first iteration starts, agile teams typically first estimate the
size of each user story through techniques such as expert opinion, analogy, and
disaggregation. Then, they need to determine how quickly they complete the work. i.e.
what is their velocity. Finally, they can determine when the work can be done, i.e.
schedule the work.

To determine the number of sprints required to meet the release goal, a prioritized list
of user stories, regardless of how priority is determined, is essential to any subsequent
release or sprint planning.

In this situation, the product owner, most likely in consultation with the
business/stakeholders, should determine if the two days should be spent on story B or
story A.

During the life cycle of an agile project, a story may move up or down in priority in
relation to other stories that may have been introduced. Changing business may also
drive re-prioritization. As a result, the backlog is groomed throughout the life of the
project. Developer choose the stories for an iteration from the iteration backlog, but it is
the product owner (a proxy for the customer) who prioritizes stories.

Backlog refinement refers to the progressive elaboration of project requirements and

the ongoing activity in which the team collaboratively reviews, updates, and writes
requirements to satisfy the needs of the customer request. [Agile Practice Guide, 1st
edition, Page 150]

83/20=4.15. Round 4.15 up to 5. 5 iterations is the best answer. [Agile Estimating and
Planning. Mike Cohn.]

Greg should place the task card in the 'in progress' column to signify that the task is
currently being executed. [Lean-Agile Software Development: Achieving Enterprise
Agility. Alan Shalloway, Guy Beaver, James R. Trott.]

If the story is complex and cannot be completed within the time-box of one iteration,
the story should be sliced. Whether the story should be replaced with another one, or
should the developer consult with the team only or with the team and product owner,
whether the slicing should be done immediately or during the next iteration planning, is
a different question, in the context of the current scenario, of the choices provided, this
option is the best answer.
The scrum master does not have a solid understanding of agile principles and is
therefore letting the daily scrum meeting go over the 15-minute best practice timebox.

In order to determine the best development approach, the team should conduct an
architectural spike to determine which technology should be selected.

Wideband Delphi technique uses anonymous estimating where the team achieves buy-
in and consensus through discussion and collaboration.

A parking lot chart is an agile artifact used to organize and categorize user stories by
theme. A parking lot chart typically includes the name of the identified themes, the
number of stories and story points it includes, and a progress chart to show the
completion percentage of story points. For example, a parking lot chart could have a
theme of 'database' with 6 user stories worth 80 story points at a 50% completion. A
50% completion would indicate that 40 story points had been completed, but NOT
necessarily that 3 stories had been completed because not all stories are equivalent in
effort. [Agile Estimating and Planning. Mike Cohn.]

Many ranking methods exist but they all pivot around organizational value. Only one of
the given choices pivots around value: ranking with value including cost of delay divided
by duration. [Agile Practice Guide, 1st edition, Page 59]

Because there is no historical velocity available to use as a guideline for the first
iteration, the team should use “real time” available for development during the
two-week iteration and include only those user stories that will add up to the real time
available.

Allowing time to perform an exploratory spike to address the unknown technical issues
regarding the implementation of the high priority complex feature is the best option
among the answer choices provided. The spike would help the team understand the
technical requirement to implement the feature and allow them to provide an effort
estimation for this work.
It is better for the team to fail fast to detect and correct potential problems as early as
possible on the project.

Because the product owner is responsible for ROI and has the most knowledge on what
the complete objectives are for a product, the product owner should lead the sprint
review. [Agile Project Management with Scrum. Ken Schwaber.]

During the daily standup meeting, each member identifies obstacles that impede their
work. These obstacles can include risks and mentioning them in the daily meeting
communicates that a risk has occurred and become an issue, an impediment that needs
attention.

In release planning, the agile project manager discusses the product vision with the
development team in detail. This ensures that the proper requirements, acceptance
criteria, and priorities are established. [The Art of Agile Development. James Shore.]

Team members need to be educated on the importance of participating with their

teammates during the daily standup meeting. This meeting allows others to gain a feel
for their teammates’ progress and the issues they might have encountered.

The development team has final say on the amount of work that can be accomplished in
the sprint. Therefore, if the team thinks it can complete all user stories included in the
sprint backlog, the scrum master should not intervene. Therefore, this answer choice
represents the most likely reason that the agile practitioner mentioned at the
retrospective, making this choice the best answer to the question asked.

Story points is a relative size unit of measure used to estimate the effort required
to implement a user story.

Agile teams should agree to one method of estimation, either story points or ideal
days, as both use different units of measurement and can lead to confusion.
[Agile Estimating and Planning. Mike Cohn.]
Backlog refinement is the process of keeping the backlog updated and accurately
prioritized based on the latest requirements and new information.

Waiting for the delivery of hardware and equipment represents an impediment to

progress, and this is an appropriate topic for a daily standup meeting.

The backlog is the ordered list of all the work, presented in story form, for a team.
At any given point in time, the current produce backlog defines the current project
scope. [Agile Practice Guide, 1st edition, Page 52]
In many cases, the team members working on a new project have no details
regarding the product backlog. Therefore, they use iteration zero to set up an
initial product backlog.

A 0 point user story is said to be of minimal effort for a development team. [Agile
Estimating and Planning. Mike Cohn.]

Even though they are very important, chartering, visioning, road mapping, and
release planning are not part of Scrum. The scrum guide does describe scrum
events, which include iteration or sprint planning.
User stories may be sliced into smaller chunks or resized by the development
team when necessary so that the story can be completed in one iteration.

The “contract” between the product owner and the team says that there will
be no changes to the iteration backlog unless absolutely necessary. A change to
the current iteration is a very rare occurrence.

Project buffers are used in agile to account for uncertainty.

Discussing user stories with the appropriate stakeholders is necessary for the
team to confirm their understanding of the user stories.
Velocity is usually known after the team has run a few iterations (typically two to
three). Dividing the total amount of story points by velocity would result in the
number of iterations required to complete the project. With a time-boxed iteration
length (for example 2 weeks), an estimated project duration can then be
calculated.

A project burndown chart is an often used information radiator to show iteration

progress. It charts two series: the actual work remaining and ideal/estimated
work remaining. The vertical axis is the work unit (often story points or hours) and
the horizontal axis is iteration duration (typically in number of days). The
ideal/estimated work series is a straight, downward sloping line originating on the
vertical axis at the value of work to be completed (e.g., 20 story points) and
extending to the horizontal axis (i.e., 0 story points) on the last day of the
iteration. The actual series is dependent upon the agile team's productivity and
the task complexity and is updated daily. The actual series is typically volatile
and is not a straight line but ebbs and flows as the project team tackles the
development process. [Agile Estimating and Planning. Mike Cohn.]

Task switching is one of the reasons why ideal time does not equal elapsed time.
Task switching causes project team members to lose focus on their assigned
tasks. This results in more time added to complete these tasks since team
members have to reorient themselves to where they were in the original task
before they switched to another task.

Agile team members should feel free to update incorrect task time estimates as
soon as possible. Team members can use current iteration progress and accrued
experience to come to a new task time estimate. [Lean-Agile Software
Development: Achieving Enterprise Agility. Alan Shalloway, Guy Beaver, James
R. Trott.]

Since the development team will actually be performing the work, it will always be
up to the development team to determine how many story points they can
commit to completing in any given sprint.

A story map is a high-level planning tool that is used by agile project

stakeholders to map out the project features and their priorities in early planning
stages of the project. The main difference between the story map and the
roadmap is that the product roadmap organizes the features placed on the story
map in releases which allows the stakeholders to see features will be delivered in
each release. A story map does not have information about releases and
milestones. It is a useful way to discuss the features. Think of a story map as a
visual representation of the product backlog, which can be used as an input to
release planning. other choices are not visual tools described in the question.
Routine work of supporting prior releases should be included as part of the
iteration. This routine work should be planned ahead and discussed at iteration
planning meetings.

Epics can reduce the time a team spends on upfront estimation. When it gets
closer to development, the team would still need to progressively elaborate the
user stories to decompose and refine their associated tasks. However, by
delaying detailed planning and estimation, the team does not unnecessarily
spend time in detailed estimates, which would need to be redone if things were to
change.

T-shirt sizing is a common estimation technique used by agile project teams for a
quick and simple way to estimate the relative sizes of product features or user
stories. With this technique, the product features or user stories are estimated
using t-shirt sizes ranging from extra small through extra-extra large.