Story Points

A story point is a measure of relative effort required to implement the behavior that the the user story represents. This is inclusive of effort required for all phases in an iteration.

Few points to note:

• Story points are meaningless outside of the team that assigned them.
• X story point for one team might be different for other team.
• It is team and consensus on the approximate effort required for a story.
• Story point does not represent absolute effort measured in days/hours or any other measurement.
• Story pints very roughly corresponds to historical range of times. Considering minimum, maximum and average actual time taken for stories for a corresponding size. Sometime a baseline story feeds story points to other related stories.

When estimating with story points, be sure to consider each of these factors. Let’s see how each impacts the effort estimate given by story points.

• The amount of work to do
• The complexity of the work
• Any risk or uncertainty in doing the work