Explaining empirical process control to a product owner

The day after, I called each of the product owners of Brasigo and BlogBlogs, separately, and showed them the hour-glass metaphor. The message I wanted them to understand was: as the current release evolves, we will have a good estimate of when it will be finished, with its current scope, and that is empirical process control.

To achieve this, first I played the hour-glass estimation game: 3 sprints of 30 seconds each, so that them could make four guesses for the total time needed to pass all the sand from one side to the other. At the third sprint, both of them made the right guess, and I stopped the game.

Then, I started it again saying: “Imagine that this sand is the product backlog slice corresponding to a release. At the beggining, the developers have no idea of the time needed to implement it. But after some iterations, usually the team will have a very good estimate of how much time they still needs to finish it. And that is empirical process control.”

After that, both of them had an instant insight!