Should the number of developers be considered when estimating a task?

Posted by Ludwig Magnusson on Programmers See other posts from Programmers or by Ludwig Magnusson
Published on 2012-11-07T09:30:35Z Indexed on 2012/11/07 11:20 UTC
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agile

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scrum

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time-estimation

I am pretty inexperienced with working in agile projects but I have tried it a few times and I always run into this problem when estimating a task.

Do we bring into the estimate the number of developers that will work on the task?

Let me explain: Task A is estimated to one time unit and developer 1 will work on it. Task B is also estimated to one time unit and developer 2 and 3 will work on it together.

I.e. if developer 1 begins to work on task A at the same time developer 2 and 3 begins to work on task B they will all finish at the same time according to the estimate.

Should the estimate for task B be twice of that for task A or the same?

The problem as I see it is that when a task is received and estimated, it is not always possible to know how many people will work on it. And if you assumed that two developers would work on the task for one time unit but it turns out that only one developer will actually do it, this will not automatically mean that that developer will work on it for two time units.

Is there any standard practice for this?

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