Elaborations and Estimations: Planning Enterprise Systems

August was a month of intensive planning. We faced the challenge of outlining features for the next quarter – preparing the groundwork for approximately 20 major tasks. Each required not only technical knowledge but, above all, deep analysis and precise estimation during the so-called elaboration process.

The complex task preparation process included:

• Code Archaeology: Finding and analyzing the logic responsible for a given function in the desktop version (often scattered between the backend and the database),
• Analytical Documentation: Creating structured notes and diagrams in Excel/Notion that serve as the 'single source of truth' for the entire team,
• Risk Management: Identifying potential technical issues and 'bottlenecks' early in the planning stage,
• Dependency Analysis: Coordinating work with the framework team and ensuring seamless integration with other system modules,
• Decomposition: Breaking down large requirements into smaller, atomic tasks ready for sprint execution,
• Engineering Valuation: Precisely estimating labor time with testing and bug fixing in mind.

In the spirit of Agile, we divided areas within the team – each of us took full responsibility for analyzing several key functionalities.

My key areas of responsibility in the planning process:

• Presenting and justifying estimates to the team, Product Manager, and Product Owners during elaboration sessions,
• Creating technical User Stories and precisely defining Acceptance Criteria within tasks,
• Consultations with the Product Owner (PO) – actively refining requirements, resolving business doubts, and finding optimal solutions,
• Reverse Engineering: Analyzing PL/SQL database procedures and the .NET backend to recreate the original business logic.

Results of a month spent on analysis:

• Deep architectural understanding: I learned about system dependencies that aren't visible when working on single tasks,
• Codebase proficiency: I learned to navigate the massive repository even more efficiently and quickly locate critical code snippets,
• Technical communication: I significantly improved my ability to translate business language into technical language and vice versa,
• Realism in estimation: I learned to account for unforeseen difficulties, resulting in more realistic and deliverable deadlines.

It was an intensive time for conceptual work. Now that the roadmap for the next quarter is clear and the estimates are solidly grounded in reality, it's time to focus on what developers love most – coding and delivering business value according to plan.

Remember: an hour spent on good analysis and estimation saves ten hours of debugging and fixing misunderstood requirements.