Estimating With Story Points
Understand, Explain, and Create Great Estimates with Story Points
This on-demand video course shows you how to:
- Cut through the confusion of what story points are
- Explain story points to your team AND stakeholders
- Create great estimates, even on teams with diverse skills, experience, or personalities
- Plan fixed-date and fixed-scope projects
What You Get
Lifetime, instant access to 40+ lessons on estimating with story points
Almost 4 hours of video content
Quizzes to test your knowledge
Why Take Estimating with Story Points
This on-demand video course gives you a solid understanding about what story points are, shows you how to avoid common mistakes, and helps you and your team use story points effectively.
Each module coaches you through different aspects of using story points, and worksheets help to apply the lessons to your current projects. It works well as an onboarding resource for new employees, and it can also be used to help teams that have fallen into bad habits.
This special release includes two bonus modules on stakeholders and planning, only available here.
Why Use Story Points
- Welcome
- What Time Doesn't Work?
- Aren't We Bad at Estimating? Can We Get Better?
- Why Estimated at All?
What Story Points Are
- Story Points Are Relative Estimates
- Amount, Risk, Uncertainty, and Complexity
- Sequences for Estimating: Fibonacci and Other
- Get Rid of Big Numbers
- Agree on What Type of Estimate to Provide
Creating Estimates
- Establishing a Baseline
- Why You Don't Want a Baseline Tying Points to Days
- Planning Poker
- Affinity Estimation
- Seven Variations on Affinity Estimation
- Re-Estimating: If, When, and Why?
- When to Estimate
- Why Do You Want the Whole Team to Estimate
- A Rosetta Stone of Estimates from Multiple Teams
Improving Estimates
- Triangulate
- Handling Someone Who Won't Budge
- Avoid Overly Optimistic Estimates with Buckets
- Five Ways to Get Better Estimates
- Four Things to Avoid When Estimating
Introducing Story Points to a Team
- Overview of Introducing Story Points to a Team
- How to Introduce Story Points to a Team – Points Are Relative and the Units Are Meaningless
- How to Introduce Story Points to a Team – Points Are Effort
- How to Introduce Story Points to a Team – Points Are Influenced by the Amount of Risk, Uncertainty, and Complexity
- How to Re-Introduce Story Points to a Team That's Been Using Them Incorrectly
- Overcoming a Reluctance to Estimate
- How to Plan and Run an Estimating Meeting
Troubleshooting
- Non-Additive Scales.
- Estimating Too Much or Not Enough of the Product Backlog
- Avoiding Estimate Inflation
- Putting Points on Everything – Should Bugs Get Points?
- Getting Faster at Estimating
Stakeholders and Story Points
- What Stakeholders Need to Know About Points
- What Are Story Points and Why Can't We Just Use Person-Days?
- Predicting Date and Cost Using Story Points.
- Why You Can't Measure Productivity or Compare Teams with Points
Planning with Story Points
- The Components of a Plan
- Estimating What You Don't Know
- Estimating Velocity as a Range
- Estimating Velocity Without Data
- Fixed-Date Plans
- Fixed-Scope Plans
Wrap Up
Bonus: Additional Story Points Training
- Equating Points to Time
- Getting Hung Up, Trying to Create Perfect Estimate Estimates
- Overcoming People Problems to Get Good Estimates
The Godfather of Story Points has done it! Successfully putting together a one-stop course to teach me everything he does when working with teams. WOW! How can I not succeed now using them correctly and teaching others the right way?!
Justin Amore
Access Our Resources, Planning Poker® and AI Toolkit
Expanded access to MGS Essentials, included with your trainining, is your toolkit for doing agile better, with resources that help you and your team move faster, plan smarter, and deliver more value.
Access live events, video lectures, and a powerful set of tools including online Planning Poker®, the Elements of Agile assessment and AI tools for coaching, story splitting and backlog item generation.
Upcoming Public Training
Course Includes:
Certification Credits
Your Instructor
Mountain Goat has handpicked instructors that share our training values. These are people with deep experience, who are leading teams with agile today and can give you real-world answers about what does and doesn’t work.
Mike Cohn
With 20+ years of agile training experience, Mike has honed a talent for explaining agile concepts with clear illustrations and real-life examples. Participants enjoy his passion for teaching the agile methodologies in a relatable and digestible way.
Read more...Mike is CEO of Mountain Goat Software, and one of the industry’s most well-respected Certified Scrum Trainers. He is the author of User Stories Applied for Agile Software Development, Agile Estimating and Planning, and Succeeding with Agile. He is a co-founder and former board member of the Scrum Alliance, and a co-founder of the non-profit Agile Alliance, home of the Agile Manifesto.
Scrum Certifications include: CSM, CST, CSPO, A-CSM, CSP-SM, CSP-PO
Got a Question?
What happens when you contact us?
- We’ll get back to you within a day.
- Answer your training questions and discuss any custom needs.
- Recommend the best agile training path for your teams and goals.
- Want to talk to someone? Schedule a call.