In Agile , We do story points like 1 , 2 , 3 and 5. For some its complexity and for others its an effort. How should we do the story point estimation ?
ie. A story based on complexity may be just 1 ( trivial thing) but effort may be more than a sprint. Saving Changes...
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Federico VarchavskyBusiness Development Manager| PM HuntingBuenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Argentina
Hi Anantha,
Your question is a pretty common one in the agile community among early agile adopters.
In my opinion: it's much better and productive to use the story points as the effort needed to develop the story.
The effort probably takes into consideration other aspects such as: complexity, risk, uncertainty, among many other factors.
If a story is estimated in more points than a team would work on during an iteration, it should be split into more than one story. It's probably too large, usually called epic and it's easier to have it divided in some more stories than having a very large one.
As the team works, it finds out its velocity in story points so it's easier to see how many story points they can do in any given iteration. Also, the team get better at estimating as a team and working better so its performance should be increasing with time.
Keep in mind that in agile we estimate as a team, not as individuals.
I hope this helps you.
Have a great day!
Federico. Saving Changes...
Tom MillerConsultant| dba: Galenson ConsultingLawrence, Ks, United States
If you need further help Mike Cohn of Mountain Goat has a good video course that works around this on the subject of planning.
I also like his book on User Stories.... Saving Changes...
Karl BargerTechnology Delivery Leader| Southwest AirlinesFlower Mound, Tx, United States
Bravo Federico! I couldn't agree with you more.
Story points should represent the relative estimate of the effort to complete a user story. Relative to what, you ask? Good question.
The effort should be relative to other stories in the product backlog - i.e. story A will be twice the effort as story B that we played 2 sprints ago.
When story points are relative to other stories in the product backlog, it's easy to see why comparing the velocity of one Team to another isn't reasonable - but that's a topic for another discussion.
Cathleen TracySupervisory IT Specialist| Department of Homeland Security Falls Church, Va, United States
Thanks for the link. I've always thought of story points as a proxy for hours / time. Saving Changes...
arlene trimbleAssistant IT Director| Local GovernmentAlamo, Ca, United States
Thank you for the video suggestion and the link. Very helpful. I have found Mike Cohn's book very clear and easy to understand. Saving Changes...
srikanth yekolluManager Cybersecurity| LUMEN TechnologiesBanglore, Karnataka, India
The Story point estimations using different techinques are basically to undestand the complexity of the specific user story however we cant relate required effort againest a story point size.
Effort require might be different for two user stories though their size is same.
Ideally it should be Size but not effort.but for planning/scheduling purpose we might do one more excersize to define effort require for each User story and based on our velocity we will plan Iteration Saving Changes...
