Story Points

Unit of Estimating the relative amount of work needed to complete a User Story. Ron Jeffries: I like to say that I may have invented story points, and if I did, I’m sorry now.

WikiWikiWeb:StoryPoints: The valuable discussion to have around estimates is "Why is this so expensive?" These discussions often uncover unspoken assumptions that lead to a simpler (to implement) story that still solves the business problem.

Ron Jeffries apologizes for inventing them: (2019-05-23) Jeffries Story Points Revisited

John Cutler lists its jobs to be done: too many for coherence.

Typically use in Powers Of Two (1, 2, 4, 8), or Fibonacci Sequence (1, 2, 3, 5, 8, etc.) to avoid bogus precision of bigger numbers.

But what is the unit of measure?

• some people use the Man Hour - WikiWikiWeb:UsingHoursInsteadOfStoryPoints
• I usually use the Man Half Day (in Powers Of Two increments) (so values are 0.5, 1, 2, 4)

Some people try to say "points don't represent time", but then they add them up to "measure" Velocity. Do not lend these people money.

Some suggest you should keep slicing stories until they are all 1 point, and then you get velocity by counting stories.