Understanding AGILE “Story Points”

Story Points are used to estimate the work mentioned in Product Backlog in Agile World. It’s a Unit of measurement and its relative number.

It’s the effort that the team will put to develop a user story

Below factors are commonly considered while estimating the story point:

· Amount of Work to be finished

· Risk involved

· Complexity of the work

· Uncertainty involved

Some Interesting Facts:

· A Sock can be 1 Story Point, a trouser can be 3 Story Points and a blanket can be 5 story point

· A field to be added on a screen can be of 1 Story point but adding exact same 100 fields may not be 100 Story Points

· 1 Non database code can take 2 Story Points to finish but 2 Non Database code may take more than 4 Story points..

The Story point estimation must include all the efforts that will be required to bring the status of the story to DONE i.e. it shall include analysis, coding, testing, review, demo etc.

There are many techniques that can help you to estimate such as:

· T Shirt size = S M L XL XXL

· Fibonacci Series = 1 2 3 5 8

· Relationship = Pebble Rock Hill Mountain

The actual definition of the estimating numbers can be decided and assigned by the team.

Eg

S : Its defined as the story which is Quick to Build , have least complexity, its known what needs to be done and it can be developed in a day

M : Its defined as the story which is Quick to Build , have low complexity, its known what needs to be done and it can be developed in 2 days

L: It’s defined as the story which is not Quick to Build, have some complexity, somewhat known what needs to be done and it can be developed in 2–3 days

XL: It’s defined as the story which is not too Quick to Build, have some complexity, Not sure what needs to be done and it can be developed in 1 week

XXL: It’s defined as the story which is not too Quick to Build , have lot of complexity, Not sure what needs to be done and it can be developed in 2–3 weeks

Ideally as it’s all about how much a TEAM can achieve, hence the Team itself should discuss and assign Story Points.

Velocity

Once you collect all the story points you have achieved in a sprint, it shall be called your team’s VELOCITY.

The Velocity changes in every Sprint but it becomes more predictable after few Sprints and team gets better in knowing amount of work that can be done.

The good thing about STORY POINTS is that estimation is relative to items that the team has already finished hence it would mean that our past performance is used as the measure of effort for future work

The Story Point must be agreed by the team members — that’s the essence of it and its most important.

Remember — It shouldn’t matter who is actually going to implement the user story — a senior resource or a junior resource.

-Originally Posted on Medium at

https://medium.com/@suren.gaur1/https-medium-com-understanding-agile-story-points-56c472fc9ba