…to a particular user story or product backlog item. Common examples I’m asked about include tasks like “update the build server to use the latest version of FitNesse.” Fixing bugs from prior iterations are another common example. I’ve sometimes heard of these tasks that don't belong to a particular product…

A common criticism of story points is that the meaning of a story point will differ among teams. In this post I want to describe how can we establish a common definition of a story point across multiple teams within an organization. The best way to estabish a common baseline…

…people understand and explain story points. It's not currently available but you can register here to find out when it's next released. Today’s post introduces the first installment in a free series of training videos to help teams use story points to create estimates. The training will be available until…

…size given in the Points row. The first set of data is for one-point stories, the second set of data is for two-point stories and so on. Looking at the one-point data, we see that the median number of hours to complete a one-point story (at this company) was 21…

…mistake. 9) What Are Story Points? Story points are perhaps the most misunderstood topic in agile. Story points are not based on just one factor—such as complexity, as is often mistakenly claimed. Instead, story points are based on a combination of factors. 8) Advice on How to Split Reporting User…

…teams were using task points to estimate their sprint backlog items in conjunction with story points for the product backlog items. This was intriguing. By then, I had already become a proponent of story points—I’ve since become even much more of a proponent because of the advantages that story points…

…and dramatic increase was story point inflation. Or, more generally, estimate inflation, because the problem can happen with estimating units other than just story points. Estimate inflation is when the estimate assigned to a product backlog item (usually a user story) increases over time. For example, today the team estimates…

When estimating with story points, most teams use a predefined set of values that doesn’t include every possible number. For example, teams commonly use powers of two (1, 2, 4, 8, 16,...) or a Fibonacci sequence (1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, …) By intentionally leaving some numbers out of…

…proponent of estimating in story points. (You can get a full overview of how to use story points in the video above or from reading What Are Story Points.) In all of my training and writing about story points, user stories, planning poker, and agile estimating, I’ve been quite adamant…

…will be delivered. Putting story points on product backlog items during sprint planning is simply too late for those benefits to accrue. There are other problems with assigning story points during sprint planning but assigning them that late does not allow the product owner to take advantage of the new…

Story points are about time. There, I’ve said it, and can’t be more clear than that. I’ve written previously about why story points are about effort, not complexity. But I want to revisit that topic here. The primary reason for estimating product backlog items is so that predictions can be…

…this. To be clear, points are relative, and it's hard to compare teams, but if a team builds project A, then is about to start project B, we can use their A velocities to predict B as long as the points are consistent across projects. If a 5-point story on…

…that is estimating in story points ever re-estimate? This is a question I'm commonly asked and would like to address here. Most people have a natural feeling that re-estimating is somehow wrong but they can't quite say why. I'll encourage those individuals to stick to their hunches, and hopefully I…

…between “ideal days” and “story points.” Regardless of which they choose, they still do sprint planning in hours. I prefer story points for the product backlog items (typically “user stories” are on the product backlog for me). What this means is that I may have a user story (“As a…

Story points are a unit of measure for expressing an estimate of the overall effort that will be required to fully implement a product backlog item or any other piece of work. When we estimate with story points, we assign a point value to each item. The raw values we…