Agile places great importance on the “early and continuous delivery of valuable software”.
But somehow, when it comes to estimating stories, teams estimate effort instead of value.
Estimating can be a time consuming process.
What if we flipped estimating stories? What if… instead of developers estimating the effort, the product owner estimated the value (instead of just ordering the backlog)?
What if… instead of the product owner ordering the backlog, the developers ordered which stories to deliver in order to maximise return on investment?
Of course, the key is the conversation between product people and technical people, but too often this gets overlooked. Maybe a different approach to prioritisation would help.