Best Way to Determine Story Points - Agile

3 min readMay 19, 2020

What are Story Points

Story Points are estimates of efforts as influenced by the amount of work, complexity, risk and uncertainty. Story points are a unit of measure for expressing an estimate of the overall effort that will be required to fully implement a product backlog item or any other piece of work or user story.

Benefits of using Story Points

Quickly estimate issues : Estimation is relative to already completed Product Backlog Items. This is faster than estimating without any reference.
Estimate Without Giving a Specific Time Commitment: When estimating in hours you make a precise time commitment. Estimating in Story Points prevents giving an exact commitment. Nobody knows exactly how many hours you are appointing to a specific issue.
Overview of the Scope of Work: Helps to get an overview of the scope of work needed in the particular item as it is based on amount of work, complexity, risk and uncertainty.
Accurate enough to plan sprints ahead: This allows to better manage the time expectations of stakeholders for future work.

Different Story Point Sizing Technique

Linear Sizing:- We give number from [1–10].
T-Shirt Sizing :- X-Small, Small, Medium, Large, Extra-Large .
Fibonacci Sequence Sizing:- We give estimates in a Fibonacci Sequence(1,2,3,5,8,13,21…).

Note :- Most used Sizing Technique is Fibonacci Sequence Sizing.

What Goes in Story Point

Because story points represent the effort to develop a story, a team’s estimate must include everything that can affect the effort. That could include:

The amount of work to do : Certainly, if there is more to do of something, the estimate of effort should be larger.
The complexity of the work: More Complex the work, it will take more time to complete the work. There’s more chance the developer makes a mistake and has to back up and correct it.
Any risk or uncertainty in doing the work: The amount of risk and uncertainty in a product backlog item should affect the story point estimate given to the item.

Note:- When estimating with story points, be sure to consider each of these factors and also consider everything in Definition of Done.

Steps to Size the Story Point

Identify Base Stories: It is very important to identify one or multiple base or reference story against which you would do relative sizing of the backlog. This story is picked from current product backlog or a different story which we had done earlier. But what is important is the understanding of this story is same among everyone on the team. Team should be confident of this base story.
Talk Through the Requirements of the Story: Product Owner or a business analyst should provide explanation about what exactly this story entails and answer all questions related to it.
Ask Questions Within or With Team Before Start Sizing: Design, Amount of Code, Integration Points, Acceptance Testing, Expertise(Does Anybody have done similar story before), Complexity, Risk and Uncertainty.
Find Some Point of Relative Comparison: If this story is about the same amount of work as one you have already sized, give it the same number of points. If it is more difficult, give it a proportionally higher value. If this story is similar to another but less complex because of the learning from previous story, give it a lower value.
Reach a Consensus Within the Team for the size of Story as per Definition of Done .
Validate that your estimate are consistent among stories as you go along.
Periodically ensure that all of the 1’s are about the same ,all of the 2’s match..etc.

Likewise, the team should agree that a five-point story is roughly twice as much work as a two-point story, two point story is roughly twice as much work as a one-point story.

So what is your experience in using this technique till now? Please share.