Estimating user stories at the start of the project so that the PM can determine a quote for the client?

Question

Recently I have started to work on a team in a new project. Our company is attempting to run things in an Agile manner.The project team consists of 4 developers each from different teams and with different business domain knowledge of the new project.Our first get together involved going through a list of user stories and using Planning poker attempted to give estimates for the stories presented. However I really struggled with this process. Here for a few things that I struggled with. 1. A-lot of the stories were UI driven and the complexity of it could depend on the complexity of the UI which we had no idea of. Hence I struggled to estimate appropriately. 2. The PM wanted us to estimate all the stories. However some of the stories had huge unknowns and questions which the PM couldn't answer. 3. Some of the stories involved knowledge about how we were going to implement the system from a code design point of view. We couldn't really agree on anything in particular as it involved some decisions from external people. 4. In our estimates there was no tester involved to add their input.An example of a couple of the user stories looked like:> As an Account Manager / Field Office I want to to install the> application locally so that I can use it when offline.> As a CRM Administrator I want to be able to store the xml files from> the application into the company CRM system so that I can print> branded reports.Despite all of this, we still went through estimating using relative story points. The PM was then going to go away and cost up the project and estimate it time wise so she can do a quote for the company requiring the work.My questions include: 1. As developers is it our responsibility to ensure we have enough information in order to estimate. If we have unanswered questions should we push back and require more. 2. Should you estimate all user stories at the start of a project? 3. Given our estimates what is the best way for the PM to determine the hours per point so that she can estimate a total cost? I believe typically we use the average time from a previous project however this project consists of 4 new developers. 4. Should we do UI mockups and design discussions during this process to help us better estimate?

Answer 1

This is an interesting question with many possible answers.

In my opinion, I would first start with an analysis User Story and refine it going forward. Like you mentioned, it is clearly not possible to estimate efforts/costs/schedule etc at the very beginning. Therefore as a PM,I would-

1. Organize brain storming sessions with stakeholders to understand what kind of UI they are expecting. Many a times stakeholders have no idea what they want and they keep changing requirements which causes re-work and dissatisfaction in the team.
2. Organize initial discussions with technical leader/team leaders to ensure they understand the ask! (Most important). I would then give them sometime to think !
3. Circle back with everyone to take their opinions and estimate schedule and cost based on that.

Until I am not done, this would go on as an analysis User story.