As a seasoned Scrum Master – a team with a stabilized velocity is valuable to me so that I can size up a release quickly and at the high level accurately enough to predict if we will meet dates, to determine dates if scope is set and to keep my upper management highly enformed.

To stop team members from getting hung up and stuck on a story point relating to time, I simply removed the number. We no longer use cards and numbers. We simply size the backlog using ExtraSmall, Small, Medium, Large and ExtraLarge. We have a baseline Medium story which we use for each and every pointing session to start our triangulation for new stories.

For me, I have the numbers assigned to each size, XS-3 | S-5 | M-8 | L-13 | XL-20. Anything over an XL is not a sprintable story for us and can be tagged with a 40 or 100 but basically they need to be broken down and we don’t entertain them into our sprints. I found the meetings less confusing, less frustrating for teams, more effecient and I still have a velocity calculated with each sprint.

Story points are very useful way to estimate at a gross level / release level. Most useful at a release planning level. In a sprint planning I use it as a tool that can make the planning process efficient.

After the capacity plan is done, the team has an idea. I generally ask the team to pick the first few prioritized stories and size them quickly. This starts a communication in sprint planning between the scrum team and product owner. I think this is the biggest benefit i get out of using story points and sizing.

Instead of this if we use time, the conversation take a different turn. I think in the end it does not matter if a small take 40 hours or a large takes 30 hours. What matters is team used the card and conversation to build software in the two or three weeks and delivers value to the product owner.

Thanks again!
Ian

Thanks