Manish BhadauriaProject Manager| Cignex Datamatics Pvt. LtdNew Delhi, Delhi, India
It is still tough to explain people that there is no relationship between story points and time. They will find a way or another to establish this relationship. Another challenge is comparison of two teams based on SPs they are delivering. If team A has delivered 20 SPs and team B has 25 then, people start perceiving team B is better.
I am trying an analogy to help understanding it better, please share your feedback if it makes sense and also share how you try to make people understand about it.
We all eat food. We can follow a time table for different meals or we can eat when we are really hungry (expert advice). If we follow time table (similar to follow a planned approach) then we have to eat something at time whether we are hungry or not. In another case we can eat based on our food requirements. If we had a lighter breakfast we may be hungry before lunch time and if we had heavier breakfast we may choose to skip lunch or (if needed) eat later when breakfast is digested. And definition of light and heavy is different for different individual’s appetite so no comparison.
In the same way in story point sizing, a team member can finish a 3 SP story earlier than the 2 SP story and ready to pick another from sprint backlog. When we limit story points with time it will either create pressure or work will expand to fill time. Both the scenarios are not good for any team. It will definitely hamper the idea of self-organizing because team starts following a time.
Over the time a team can develop an understanding that to finish a certain SP how much time they are taking, even then it is not advisable to adopt this relationship as one fine day you may again eat heavy or lighter breakfast. Saving Changes...
