Why we added estimated hours and costs to KS Status

Hours and cost estimates are often not found in Agile software; they are mostly found in traditional project management tools. So why did we add them to Status, an Agile software management tool? Let's start with these questions we often ask while working on projects.

- How much time did a feature or set of user stories take?
- Did we spend too much time on a feature that won't return on the investment?
- We have a great team; where are they spending time? Is it in the right place?
- We are stuck and not progressing; what's the team working on?
- Did we have to redo the whole feature? How much time did that take?
- How much time are we spending on bugs or rework?

With the addition of hours and cost estimates in Status, you can now answer these crucial questions and understand where your teams invest the most time. This insight empowers you to pivot or adjust priorities and feature requirements, accelerating your project's value realization by focusing on high-value activities first. The hour's data is readily available, eliminating the need for tedious point-to-hour conversions found in other agile project management software. We've integrated this feature into the product for your convenience and efficiency.

We included cost as another decision-making factor in determining how a team spends the project budget. The same questions we had about time were the same questions we had about cost. It's about understanding where you spend your time and money and determining if that is the right path to return the expected value of a feature or project. If it's not, then make the pivot and change the team's direction. Given our recent times, there is less money and less tolerance for wasting it. Understanding the cost of user stories, features, and bugs is crucial in managing a project to success.

While we included hours and cost in Status, we also left them as estimated hours and cost. We did this to prevent tracking every minute and cent related to a software development project. Our estimated cost and hours metrics aim to make it easy to calculate hours and costs without requiring substantial analysis and effort. We made these estimates as directional guides to the activities happening within a project. In future versions of Status, we may include the option to track time and cost more closely, but for now, estimated hours and cost work great for understanding your projects' direction and putting you in control of making data-driven decisions.