Software Engineering Radio - the podcast for professional software developers SE Radio 599: Jason C. McDonald on Quantified Tasks
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Jan 17, 2024 Jason C. McDonald discusses the flaws of story points and introduces his alternative called Quantified Tasks. They explore various scales used for measuring tasks in agile development. The concept of quantified tasks and how they capture effort in software development is explained. The pushback encountered during implementation and the use of quantified tasks for bug detection are discussed. The benefits and challenges of using quantified tasks to identify problems within a team or company are explored. Learn how to implement and use the quantified tasks system.
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Origin of Quantified Tasks
- Jason C. McDonald's 'Quantified Tasks' originated from Scott Rosenberg's 'Dreaming in Code' observation about 'black hole' tasks.
- Experienced engineers can often identify these time-consuming tasks early on.
Nuances Lost in Story Points
- Story points fail to capture nuances like documentation quality, code complexity, or technology familiarity.
- Two tasks with the same story point value can have vastly different underlying challenges.
Quantified Tasks: Distance, Friction, and Relativity
- Quantified Tasks uses Distance, Friction, and Relativity to estimate effort, calculating Energy Points.
- Distance measures work if everything is known, Friction measures resource availability, and Relativity measures the known/unknown ratio.