10 Reasons to Love Story Pointing

10 Reasons to Love Story Pointing.

Pointing (or planning poker) is a way of estimating that focuses on the size and complexity of the user story (task) compared to others, assigning points rather than hours. Here are ten reasons for pointing:

1. It forces the team to understand the story, you can’t size something you don’t understand
2. You are less likely to overestimate
3. If you say something will take 2 hours, then someone will be back in 2 hours time wanting to see it finished. You will get blamed if it’s not done
4. It’s less likely to be adjusted by “someone who knows better”
5. No one in the team can ignore the story – everyone gets to point
6. Healthy, unexpected discussions come out of pointing
7. As you don’t know what others will point, your estimate will be real
8. You “THINK” about the task which gives rise to more slicing or discussion
9. When you come to do the task, you have already partly planned how to build it
10. knowledge is spread – you learn about other areas of the project you don’t normally go into

There are more I’m sure. I also enjoy the discussion around no-estimates, but pointing is much more than estimates.