Estimating Business Apps

Whether you’re an internal developer working for a Microsoft customer or a consultant working for a Microsoft partner: every Power Platform or Dynamics 365 project you have ever worked on has been underestimated.

Because no one wins overestimated projects...

Mentioned in this episode:

Join Estimating Business Apps - Pro plan for $50

My Estimating Business Apps course will help you up level up your agile practice and answer those two frequent questions: 'How long is it going to take?' and 'How much is it going to cost?'. Normally priced at U$199, it’s designed to give you full confidence when scoping and sizing Dynamics 365 and Power Platform work. Estimating Business Apps is just U$50 if you go Pro before 30 June 2025. That’s a $149 saving to help you finish the (Australian financial) year stronger – and smarter.

Welcome to Estimating Business Apps episode 5. This is the final episode in the Estimating Business Apps podcast mini-series.

In this episode, I introduce the final section of the Estimating Business Apps course.

Join me as I answer 20 frequently asked questions about how my teams estimate Power Platform and Dynamics 365 applications:

1. How can we explain story points to stakeholders?
2. What are the advantages of story points?
3. Aren't story points equivalent to time?
4. When should we estimate backlog items?
5. How often should we update our estimated velocity?  
6.  How should we report our velocity to our stakeholders?
7. Should we fill up our sprint backlog up to our estimated velocity?
8. When should we split epics or features into stories?
9. Should we estimate bugs?
10. Should we estimate non-functional requirements?
11.  Should we estimate sub tasks?
12.  How do we get quicker at estimating?
13. When should we re-estimate stories?
14. Why does the whole team need to be involved in estimating?
15. How does estimating work with multiple teams?
16. How do we prevent estimate inflation?
17. Can we compare teams' velocities?
18. Can we track the velocity of individual developers?
19. How do we reach consensus when our estimates are different?
20. How do we create perfect estimates?

The Estimating Business Apps is a companion podcast to my Estimating Business Apps online video course.

Using the discount code in this episode, you can register for the Estimating Business Apps course here:

https://events.humanitix.com/estimating-usd

And my Successful Scrum for Microsoft Business Apps course here:

https://events.humanitix.com/scrum-usd

Thanks for your support. Your support for my paid courses helps me keep creating free content.

Welcome to Estimating Business Apps episode 4. In this episode, I introduce the fourth section of the Estimating Business Apps course.

Join me to learn how to:

• Scale up from estimating requirements to estimating complex business applications.
• Determine your team's initial velocity even if you've never worked together before.
• Derive the cost of your project based on the run rate of your team.
• Visualise your estimates using scaled backlogs, user story maps and release burndown charts.
• Use your estimates in compelling sales proposals.
• Handle fixed-price, fixed-date or fixed-scope projects.

The Estimating Business Apps is a companion podcast to my Estimating Business Apps online video course. You can join the Estimating Business Apps course for free here: https://customery.com/estimating

The first three sections of the online video course are free. By joining the Professional Plan, your support helps me make my training available to as many business apps builders as possible.

Welcome to Estimating Business Apps episode 3. In this episode, I introduce the third section of the Estimating Business Apps course.

Join me to learn how to:

• Slice user stories into an appropriate size for estimation.
• Agree a standard story against the relative size of other stories can be estimated.
• Use affinity estimation to quickly estimate a large set of stories
• Use planning poker to estimate a small set of stories
• Derive how long it will take to deliver the feature based on the story point size of the requirement

The Estimating Business Apps is a companion podcast to my Estimating Business Apps online video course. You can join the Estimating Business Apps course for free here: https://customery.com/estimating

The first three sections of the online video course are free. By joining the Professional Plan, your support helps me make my training available to as many business apps builders as possible.

Welcome to Estimating Business Apps episode 2. In this episode, I introduce the second section of the Estimating Business Apps course.

Join me to learn how:

• Estimating a requirement is like estimating a running trail.
• Effort and the three other factors need to be included in your estimate.
• Your team can choose an estimation scale for your business apps projects.

The Estimating Business Apps is a companion podcast to my Estimating Business Apps online video course. You can join the Estimating Business Apps course for free here: https://customery.com/estimating

The first three sections of the online video course are free. By joining the Professional Plan, your support helps me make my training available to as many business apps builders as possible.

Welcome to Estimating Business Apps episode 1. In this episode, I introduce the first section of the Estimating Business Apps course. Join me to learn why:

• Stakeholders deserve accurate estimates.
• Estimates are notoriously inaccurate.
• Estimating in units of time doesn't work.
• Estimating in t-shirts doesn't work either.
• Estimates are different from forecasts and commitments.

The Estimating Business Apps is a companion podcast to my Estimating Business Apps online video course. You can join the Estimating Business Apps course for free here: https://customery.com/estimating

The first three sections of the online video course are free. By joining the Professional Plan, your support helps me make my training available to as many business apps builders as possible.

G'day, I'm Neil Benson. In this limited-edition podcast series, I'd love to teach you how to quickly, accurately and confidently estimate how long it’ll take and how much it’ll cost to build your Microsoft Power Platform and Dynamics 365 business applications. You'll be able to persuade your stakeholders to approve your proposals and win more projects.

I'm a 14x Microsoft MVP who has been using an agile approach to estimating and building Microsoft business apps since 2008. This podcast is a companion to my online video course, Estimating Business Apps. Join for free at https://customery.com/estimating.