Scrum - Do you estimate bugs?

May 02, 2022

Author: Daniel José da Silva

The scope of this conversation consider bugs found in production and bugs found outside of the user stories in the current sprint.

I am intentionally excluding bugs found in the user stories during the current sprint as those does not have to be estimated as they are part of some user story.

In my opinion bugs should be estimated.

Why bugs should be estimated?

As any work that goes in the product backlog it should be estimated that facilitates a Sprint Planning avoiding time "guesstimates" of how many bugs/user stories/spikes you can fit in the sprint.
Estimated bugs is essential for sprint forecast if they are properly prioritised in the product backlog it is very easy to forecast.
It counts in the team velocity (and should as that is work done by the team).

Some teams might have resistance in estimate bugs at fist but after some tries they will start to be more accurate in the estimation and possibly using relative sizing (here is when the empiricism kicks in using your own experience to improve) the results will be better and better.

Do you estimate bugs?

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