Story Pointing or more like confused number game

Pop quiz!

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Raise your hand if you have heard this more than a handful of times – “Story pointing is just the number of days or hours it takes to complete a user story.”

I know I have and so lets get cracking and dig deeper to understand anything What is Story Pointing all about anyways!

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Story Point –

·????? According to Gemini:

o?? ‘A story point is a relative unit used to estimate the effort required to complete a user story. It's not about actual time spent, but rather the complexity, amount of work, and any uncertaintyinvolved in the story’

·????? According to ChatGPT:

o?? ‘A Story Point is a unit of measure used to estimate the effort required to complete a particular user story or task. Rather than estimating in hours, which can be subjective and often leads to inaccuracies, teams use Story Points to indicate the relative complexity, effort, and size of each user story’

·????? According to a Google search:

o?? ‘Units of measurement used to determine how much effort is required to complete a product backlog item or any other piece of work. The team assigns story points based on the work's complexity, amount, and uncertainty’

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Here are the common terms that all three Tech Gods seem to bring up:

1.???? Estimate

2.???? Effort required

3.???? Complexity

4.???? Amount/Size

5.???? Uncertainty

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So what does that tell you?

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That’s right! Even the AI geniuses know that it is not accurate to say that Story Pointing is simply the number of days or hours needed to do absolutely anything while developing software!

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Lets dig even further with a simple example: I can’t cook to even save my life! But I can make a decent cup of tea! However if any of you are not so terribly bereft of such a life-skill then this one is for you!

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If you were to ask me to boil some pasta, a task that I have never done but have watched online videos of the same; the following is what immediately come to my mind:

1.???? Am not sure for how long to boil it, will need to either speak to someone or do some online research for which I will need some time before I even begin

--???? Uncertainty – No previous experience to refer to

2.???? Do I have a bowl to boil the pasta? If not then I may need to buy one before I even begin the task

--???? Resourcing – Capability or capacity availability and procurement

3.???? Since I have never done this before, I wonder if its similar to boiling rice, do I have a relevant reference for this task?

--???? Relativity – Need to find the closes task similar to this and learn form that if relevant

4.???? After its done boiling, should I shut off the gas and leave it sitting in the water or drain it all out?

--???? Effort required – Post go live support activities and hand over/KT to Run Teams

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There could be more, however I hope you’re seeing how something that is seemingly simple can also lead to some legitimate questions.

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Now think about developing software!

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If I were to give a story point to this task of boiling pasta, I would probably give it 5 points and am being very conservative! If you know how to do this task, then what would be your story point for this? Am sure it would probably be a 1 if you are very familiar with the task.

So what have we uncovered?

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Story pointing is relative and, for the most part its empirical!

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Lets keep in mind that story pointing is a method to ESTIMATE the effort needed to do a unit of work, that unit is usually a User Story. That being said, let us also not intertwine the two as well! A User Story is a unit of work to be done while the Story Point is the estimate of completing that unit of work.

This estimate will vary depending upon the following:

1.???? Developer’s experience

2.???? The complexity of the work

3.???? Past experience/reference

4.???? Unknowns/uncertainties

5.???? The volume of activities required to do the task, and more!

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The above list is not exhaustive however broadly speaking they usually factor in while coming up with a number. This number could change in the future if the work repeats itself in some way however there again the similar variables apply but their bearing on the estimation change.

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So now let me ask you this - Why do we need to use such an imperfect system of measurement when all we’re actually doing is just giving an estimate?

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While it is true that we’re just estimating the effort needed to complete a User Story; what we’re really doing is not limited to this one instance of Story pointing but rather trying to quantify what goes into doing some unit of work based on what we’re aware of at that moment in time. Sure it includes some level of uncertainty because software development is not an isolated activity in itself however, it serves as a purpose to:

1.???? Demonstrate and develop intelligence of the team’s knowledge and skill so that any future work can be assessed basis past experience

2.???? Continuous improvement on how units of work OR User stories are formulated and understand what ‘too much’ or ‘too little’ looks like for the team’s capability and capacity

3.???? Seek opportunities to plan basis the velocity of the team during the year considering you have enough data to predict what each quarter has been like and so you can plan ahead accordingly

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An additional note would be that its always good to follow the Fibonacci series since it tends to provide a sort of ‘gradient’ to the estimate, if Story point is higher then surely the work is falling into a ‘class’ of effort that needs to be given some extra attention. One could question as to why is such a big Story point is showing up often? Could the User Story be further broken down, is it contributing to frequent over flows?