The Difference Between Right Sizing and Same Sizing of Work Items (and Why You Should Care)

In the world of Agile practices, where adaptability and effectiveness reign supreme, two terms often pop up: Right Sizing and Same Sizing. What does “Same Sizing” even mean?  Is it possible to eliminate variability as implied by “Same Sizing”?

These seemingly similar concepts can make a significant difference in your Agile journey. Understanding these terms is crucial for effective backlog management and sprint planning if you’re a product manager or product owner.

Understanding the differences in right sizing and same sizing and how they can affect your organization is the topic of today’s article.

What Is Right-Sizing?

Right-sizing in Agile refers to the practice of customizing the size of work items in your backlog to match their inherent complexity and effort required to the time interval of your cadence. Right sizing’s goal is to ensure that each work item is of an ideal size that can be effectively managed and completed within a single sprint or iteration.  Ideal size comes into play with work items being too BIG and too SMALL.

Key aspects of right-sizing in Agile include:

Customized Estimation 

Work items are assigned story points or other estimation units based on complexity, effort, and scope. This allows for a more accurate assessment of the work’s size.

Efficiency

Right-sizing aims to optimize the efficiency of the Agile team by ensuring that the work items are neither too large, leading to incomplete tasks at the end of a sprint, nor too small, resulting in underutilization of team capacity.

Flexibility

Agile teams often encounter various work items with differing levels of complexity. Right-sizing allows teams to adapt to this diversity and select work items that align with their capacity and expertise during sprint planning.

Customer Value

Right-sizing emphasizes delivering valuable features or improvements to the product by breaking work items down into manageable chunks, allowing for quicker releases and customer satisfaction.

Why Right Sizing Matters

Imagine you have a backlog filled with work items of varying sizes, from tiny tweaks to mammoth undertakings. If you Same Size them all, your team might be overwhelmed or underutilized. Right Sizing allows you to allocate work intelligently, maximizing productivity.

Real-World Example of Right Sizing:

Take a software development project. If you Same Size all tasks as ‘1 point,’ a small bug fix gets the same weight as building an entire feature. Right Sizing would assign 1 point to the bug fix and 5 points to the feature, ensuring that effort aligns with complexity.

What Is Same Sizing?

In contrast to Right-Sizing, Same-Sizing advocates assigning a uniform size (usually a numerical value) to all work items. This approach simplifies the estimation process and fosters a sense of uniformity.

There are a few key points to understand about same sizing in Agile.

Uniformity

In same sizing, all work items are typically given the same estimation value. This simplifies assigning sizes during sprint planning and backlog grooming.

Simplicity

Same sizing is straightforward and easy to implement, making it suitable for teams new to Agile or those working on relatively homogeneous tasks.

Limited Precision

While same sizing offers simplicity, it may not account for the nuances in complexity and effort among different work items. This can result in less accurate sprint planning and potentially lead to overestimation or underestimation of workloads.

Standardization

Same sizing can create a sense of standardization within a team or organization, where all work items are treated equally. This can be valuable in environments that prioritize predictability and simplicity.

Potential Drawback 

The main drawback of same sizing is that it may not reflect the actual intricacies of work items, potentially leading to inefficiencies in resource allocation and sprint planning. It may work well for simple, routine tasks but can be less effective for projects with diverse and complex requirements.

When Same Sizing Makes Sense

Same Sizing can be beneficial when your team works on fairly homogenous tasks or if you’re new to Agile and need a straightforward starting point. It eliminates the need for nuanced complexity assessments, but it is not recommended in most cases as the real world is complex.

A real-world example of same sizing:

In a customer support team, where most tasks involve handling user inquiries, Same Sizing can mean categorizing all tasks as ‘2 points.’ While this simplifies things, it may not account for variations in effort.

Why the Difference Is Important

Understanding and recognizing the different processes and outcomes right sizing and same sizing foster is crucial in 5 ways.

Efficiency 

Right Sizing optimizes your team’s efficiency by aligning work item size and complexity to the time box in which the work is slotted to be performed.

Flexibility

Agile is about adapting to change. Right Sizing provides the flexibility to accommodate diverse work items without skewing your sprint planning.

Predictability

Same Sizing offers predictability but may overlook task intricacies. Right-sizing fosters a more accurate predictability by factoring in complexity.

Customer Satisfaction 

Delivering Right-sized work items means quicker releases and happier customers. Your team can tackle high-priority tasks first, ensuring timely delivery.

Learning and Improvement

Right-sizing encourages teams to continuously learn and improve their estimation skills, contributing to long-term success.

Backlog Management and Sprint Planning

In Scrum, backlog management and sprint planning are at the heart of successful product delivery. The choice between Right-sizing and Same-sizing can significantly impact these core aspects.

When your backlog contains a mix of right-sized work items, your sprint planning sessions become more precise with respect to the opportunity to deliver valuable and usable products. Your team can confidently commit to completing certain items based on historical throughput and performance data. The result? More realistic sprint goals and a smoother development process.

On the other hand, Same-sizing simplifies planning but can lead to overestimation or underestimation of workloads because the same-sized work items may not correlate to customer value. The result is often unmet sprint goals, project delays, and reduced predictability.

Understanding the Differences Between Right Sizing and Same Sizing is Crucial in Agile

Same-sizing offers simplicity, and Right-sizing provides adaptability, predictability, and precision. Choosing between them hinges on your team’s experience, project complexity, and long-term goals.

Leaders should embrace the nuances of Right-sizing and Same-sizing to streamline their Agile journey and achieve efficient, effective backlog management and sprint planning that elevate your projects to success.