Episode 247: Estimates and hotdesking

Published: Feb. 8, 2021, 7 p.m.

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:

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    What is your opinion about estimates. Is it a good practice? Are they helpful or just a guess? Should we estimate in story points or hours? How can we improve our estimation skills to be more accurate?\nI really don\u2019t like estimating.\nI don\u2019t think it is a good practice because we almost never get it right. The teams that I have worked also almost always made wrong estimates, causing us to miss our sprints commitments frequently. Is it a problem with this practice, or there is a way to improve it? I heard about the Kanban method, that don\u2019t use estimations, but metrics, to give predictability. What do you think?

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    Hello Soft Skills Audio :) Love the show and the great advice, I look forward to the show every week.

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    I just joined a company that embraces hotdesking and I\u2019m having trouble feeling like I am part of the team. All the engineers report into the head of engineering but we work on different projects. I work with one other engineer who works remotely from another state, and take direction from the product owner who works from another.

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    The culture of hotdesking across five floors of a multistory building means each morning I end up circling around hunting for a place to sit. Because anyone can sit anywhere, I could be sitting next to someone new from sales, marketing, finance, or engineering everyday. Everyone always looks hard at work with headphones on and our organization chart doesn\u2019t feature profile photos.

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    I\u2019ve tried introducing myself to the people I find myself next to but it\u2019s just small talk and I never see them again as everyone shuffles around. I\u2019m sick of sitting alone at lunch and missing out on \u201cwatercooler\u201d conversations. How do I make friends and figure out how I fit in with an office environment like this?

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