Topic Teasers Vol. 9: Story Points or Hours?

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  Agile   Estimating   Schedule Management   Scheduling  

My team prefers to work in Story Points, but it sometimes becomes hard to deal with the realities of how to estimate a first iteration and how to deal with the availability of the team members. How do experienced agile teams handle these realities?

A. If you want to be agile, you must estimate in Story Points. Nothing else will really work for a team once they begin to do the work of the project.

B.  Neither is the correct approach. Estimate your Product Backlog in Ideal Hours, and then they will transfer over easily to the iteration work of the team.

C. If you create software, use Story Points. If you use agile for any other type of project, estimate in work hours, which you can input into MS Project.

D. Use Story Points for the Product Backlog, but actual hours for the Iteration Backlog.

Answer: D. Use Story Points for the Product Backlog, but actual hours for the Iteration Backlog.

Many agile practices move away from traditional estimation techniques, as they are difficult to use effectively with complex, unpredictable projects. An early attempt for an alternative was to talk in terms of “ideal hours”, or the number of hours it would take to complete a task if there were no interruptions, meetings, diversions to complete work on a second project, or any other sort of non-project interference.

When working with the …

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