Estimation is a critical part of a scrum project thanks to the slew of factors it takes into account including amount, complexity, risk and uncertainty. Scrum being a minimal framework does not dictate the way estimation is done.
Scrum teams use story points as opposed to the time format in days, week or months as used by traditional project management. Story points rate relative effort to work in a Fibonacci like format.
Story points are the estimation grey area. Often scrum teams struggle to come up with a common understanding. If you are looking for a role as a scrum master, this is one of the critical skills to master. You need to understand how you can help the product owner in coming up with the right estimate. The right estimation and correct sizing limit the effort you need to put as a scrum master in resolving conflict around estimation. There are always unforeseen events/issues/complexities which team discovers as they move forward. You need to take everything into account and focus on learning.
We asked this question in our Scrum Interview challenge level 1 and got 1000+ response from real scrum masters. Here is the compilation of top responses.
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. When we estimate with story points, we assign a point value to each item. What matters are the relative values. A story that is assigned a 2 should be twice as much as a story that is assigned a 1. It should also be two-thirds of a story that is estimated as 3 story points. |
Team agrees on the story points based on complexity. e.g. Relative estimation technique can be used. Fibonacci series is one the way. Team can come up with SP based on effort required and that story can be used to relatively estimate other stories. If team is new, max 4 hours worth of effort can be considered as 1 SP and then relatively estimate other stories considering complexity. |
Poker planning. The team estimates the story points against a story. Two members who rate highest and lowest story points discuss and reach to consensus for story points. For example, a simple login page creation story can be given 1 story. |
Relative Sizing. Choose one story which resembles known in terms of functionality/complexity or in other parameters. Take that story as ideal story, give some Story Points and comparing other stories with the ideal story and give Story Points in increasing/decreasing in terms of functionality/complexity or other parameters. |
Based on complexity. We take the context of any story done in last release or iteration and then try to compare it to the current story. Reference is not always required. If work is repeated then complexity reduces. On top of that, we play poker negotiation. |
Story points are used to represent effort that we use to develop a story. As per me, this story point is influenced with these –The quality of a development task or other tasksThe Nature or Complexity of taskUnplanned risk that may occur or any risk that is expected during the task accomplishment.If I take an example :The development of story is big influencer – the development of one page is much higher than the development of other page. The complexity may be less or high than of other page. (Example – Login page has mainly 3-4 actionable links, whereas homepage has maybe 60links. ) Story point simply represents category of efforts |
We have published all the 3 blogs of Level 1 :
Would you like to answer this question, send your answer on sales@izenbridge.com, your answer will get reviewed by Expert and if your answer qualifies that will be published in the same blog with your name.
Name | Date | Place | – |
CSM Certification and Training | 30 Nov – 1 Dec 2024 | Bangalore | More Details |
CSM Certification and Training | 14 – 15 Dec 2024 | Pune | More Details |
CSM Certification and Training | 21 – 22 Dec 2024 | Delhi | More Details |