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Comment on What is a story point ? by Jacob Karma

Jacob Karma — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 20:45:22 +0000

Hi, I just wanted to mention that we have never used story points – and I still don’t see the value of them. Your post does a good job of explaining what they are, and thank you – but I would love to hear your thoughts on what the whole ‘point’ is.

Comment on About by GettingAgile.com » Blog Archive » What is a team ground rule or team working agreement

Fri, 02 Jan 2009 23:49:15 +0000

[...] Agile FAQ has provided some information on what team working agreements and ground rules are in this [...]

Comment on What is a story point ? by editor

editor — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 16:53:43 +0000

Ian,

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.

Comment on What is a story point ? by Ian Suttle

Ian Suttle — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 18:15:09 +0000

Thanks for the post. While I agree calculating story points to hours is interesting it’s also a bit inaccurate as story points are a relative means of estimating. I might estimate something to be a 20 and it takes me 4 hours, and estimate another thing as an 8 and it takes me 6 hours. 28 total points / 10 hours = 2.8 hours / point using your formula. If I apply that to just one story I’m likely not accurate. For instance, if I wanted to say I have a story which I estimate a 20 and believe I’ll spend 2.8 hours / story point, I’ll plan for this story to take 56 hours. But in the example earlier it really took 4. Why? Because it’s relative and by giving it a 20 I’m saying either a) I don’t know enough about the story to be more accurate, b) there’s a lot of risk involved, or c) it’s a lot of work. Story points should really be used for longer term estimating (I believe Mike Cohn suggests the same) and not short term. It’s a trending tool of sorts. If I really need to know how many hours or days something will take I’ll break it down and try to get an estimate in hours or days for that task. Let me know what you think about my post on story points.

Thanks again!
Ian

Comment on What is a story point ? by Bhavin H. Joshi

Bhavin H. Joshi — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 06:31:58 +0000

Hummm…
Quite interesting!
I’ll calculate the hours per story point for my team.

Comment on What is a story point ? by Federico

Federico — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 09:13:44 +0000

8 working hours? They don’t eat, talk, think? Auch…

Comment on What is a story point ? by Joe

Joe — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 17:27:54 +0000

Nice description of the story point…my team just started using SCRUM to manage our new product line and this post has really helped. Thanks!

Comment on What is Moscow Rule In Scrum? by editor

editor — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 05:45:59 +0000

This is a rule that gets mention in many books. Check out Agile retrospectives by Diana Larson

Comment on What is Moscow Rule In Scrum? by PhilippeAntras

PhilippeAntras — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 20:45:17 +0000

Hello again Vibhu,

This is really an interesting rule, where does it comes from ?

Thanks for sharing,
Philippe

Comment on What is Kiss Principle by PhilippeAntras

PhilippeAntras — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 20:40:07 +0000

Hello,

The KISS principle is mentionned in Eric Raymond, New Hacker dictionary and therefore predates agile.
See http://www.ccil.org/jargon/jargon_26.html#SEC33

The corresponding XP practice is Simple design.

Cheers,
Philippe

Comment on What is a story point ? by Himath

Himath — Sat, 24 Nov 2007 20:28:53 +0000

One issue I’ve encountered in using hours as a measure of effort is, it can be very subjective when using for estimates. In Extreme Programming (XP), developers need to estimate the effort for the stories. The effort in hours could vary from developer to developer. We could attempt to overcome this issue by using story points which can be used as a relative measure between stories. After a few iterations, it would be possible to calculate the equivalent effort in hours per story point.