Story points are measuring units to express the total estimated effort that will be required to complete a task in nearshore software development projects.
When working on Agile with Story Points we estimate assigning a value to each item. The individual value of each item is less important.
The main thing is the “relative value” that an item holds in relation to the rest. For example, an item with a value of two must hold twice the value of another with a value of one.
It doesn’t matter if your team assigns 1, 2 or 3 or 100, 200 or 300 points. What matters is the relationships among the items.
In this sense, we understand that Story Points take into account everything that can affect the effort to complete the task. For example:
- The amount of work to be done.
- The complexity of the work.
- Uncertainty.
- Previous experience with similar items.
- Your definition of “done”.
The number of Story Points assigned to an item depends on your definition of “done,” so you must pay attention to the last item. A precise definition of “done” goes beyond development and includes configurations, deployments, tests, etc.
The steps to apply this estimation technique are:
- Identify base items (Do this only once before starting the rounds to set the range of min-max average values. Out of these values are the outliners).
- Understand item requirements.
- Discuss and indicate the effort to complete the item.
- Planning Poker.
- Validate the individual estimate consistency with the rest.
