Planning Poker — Agile Estimation Technique How-to Guide

Let's face it! Project management for agile teams can include a lot of tough calls, from managing product owner expectations or undefined quality standards.

Sure, you have good days and bad days. But why not set your sights higher and aim for the ideal day?

To help you do just that, planning poker, also called Scrum poker, uses playing cards to simplify agile estimating and planning. The result? Your agile estimating and planning process runs more smoothly, and your development team increases its productivity.

In this article, you’ll explore the driving force behind planning poker,  how it helps estimation, planning poker’s history, and how to play this game.

The driving force behind planning poker

The purpose of planning poker is engaging the whole team in collaboration. Scrum poker makes it easier to make valuable time and effort estimates so your team can create satisfying deliverables.

Instead of team members verbally expressing their estimates, they use a deck of playing cards to speak for them. Drawing cards and simultaneously placing these playing cards face down eliminates bias. Everyone follows this route in the estimation process, which supports individual estimates and negates peer influence.

Other project estimation techniques use time to determine how long a task will take. Agile estimation uses story points. These story points refer to the level of effort to undertake a task.

In planning poker, the whole team assigns story points to each task. Each story point is a visual representation of the amount of work to be done and the effort that must go into completing each task. This method wins out over time since it is visual and focuses on effort involved instead of time constraints

Work estimation in agile development

The estimation process is vital to team members because it determines how much work will go into each sprint. Dividing the product backlog into bite-sized tasks helps evaluate the workload.

As a Scrum master, you have a difficult role to play. At the end of the ideal day, you want the product owner's user story to be exemplary. Simultaneously, as the Scrum master, you have a Scrum team to manage.

Agile development is a critical process that you need to control. Get the user story and story points right, and you're halfway there. Master the estimation process and sprint planning, and you control the product backlog and retrospective.

Software development teams can either use physical playing cards or software for planning poker. Using software that includes a Jira plugin is vital when you have distributed teams. When you have a Jira plugin, everyone can participate in and streamline the estimation process.

History of planning poker

Software development teams used to use another team-based estimation technique, Wideband Delphi. Although similar to planning poker, it took too much time to reach consensus with this technique.

James Grenning found that Delphi didn't work as a structured estimating approach and came up with the idea of playing poker in 2002. Grenning found that a physical deck of cards was an engaging approach for agile teams to make work estimates. He also found that Scrum poker worked better than Wideband Delphi.

Planning poker is more inclusive. The deck of cards ensures Scrum team participation in work estimates, and everyone must continue to participate until consensus is reached.

In 2002, Mike Cohn developed mountain goat software and stepped in with a deck of digital cards to use in planning poker. Scrum teams can use these digital playing cards from remote locations to improve agile estimating and planning and have some fun along the way.

Let's explore the ins and outs of the poker session and how to play the game.

What Scrum teams need for a poker session

Agile teams need a few essential items for their planning sessions. These items include:

• A deck of cards
• Estimators (the agile team)
• A moderator
• A features list
• An egg timer

Choose your playing cards

In Scrum poker, team members (estimators) each have a deck of cards. They use these playing cards to indicate their high or low estimate on how long each item on the list of features will take to complete. These list features can be the user story, story points, or ideal days to complete sprint planning.

The playing cards the development team use will follow a Fibonacci sequence. This Fibonacci sequence follows the 0, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144 pattern, where each consecutive number is the sum of the two preceding numbers.

Alternatively, team members can use a different deck of cards where the value of each number has a fixed ratio, such as 1, 2, 4, 8, 10, 12 and so on.

Different card decks provide adapted sequences, such as 0, ½, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 20, 40, and 100. Other commercial decks have cards to indicate that the agile team needs a coffee break or an infinity symbol which means that it is impossible to complete a task.

Similarly, team members can adopt a standard deck of cards for Scrum poker. Here, the team members use the Ace, the 2, 3, 5, 8, and the King.

How to play Scrum poker

Every Scrum team will have different goals, but the general sequence for playing planning poker is as follows:

• All team members have their own deck of cards except for the moderator.
• Team members ask the moderator (often the product owner) questions about themes, user stories, story points, product backlogs, agile retrospectives, or whatever else they need for their agile estimating and planning process. Questions typically surround the product owner's acceptance criteria. Questions can include whether the backlog items are complete and what the next best step is to complete the sprint.
• Once the moderator answers the agile team's questions, each team member selects a card estimate. That represents how long they think the work item will take.
• Team members then place their cards, face down, on the table or use a Jira plugin for distributed teams.
• Playing cards are placed face down to prevent anchoring, or influencing each other's evaluations.
• The moderator reveals the Scrum team's cards to view their estimates.
• If team members have a high or low estimate compared to other team members, they need to explain their reasoning. The agile team can ask more questions for clarification. This questioning period is often limited by using an egg timer.
• The process is repeated until the agile team agrees on the estimate of how long it’ll take to complete each user story.
• Agreement is frequently reached on the second or third draw of the playing cards for each work item.

Agile estimation that involves the whole team

Planning poker is an accurate, collaborative, team-building method of estimating the work for each user story.

While you prepare to use planning poker in your next product roadmap planning meeting, consider Easy Agile TeamRhythm. The app helps you group Jira items into themes so stakeholders can easily keep track.

How do you feel when someone mentions “planning”? Do you look forward to the opportunity or does the thought of making a plan send you running for the hills?

Sprint planning is a crucial part of the agile sprint cycle. It helps you and your team align around common goals, and sets you up for a successful sprint. Even if planning isn’t one of your strengths, the good news is that you can practice and get better over time with the help of some good advice.

We’ve combined our best sprint planning tips into an ultimate guide to agile sprint planning, with everything you need to run efficient and effective planning meetings.

What is agile sprint planning?

Agile sprint planning is a key ceremony in the agile sprint cycle. It signifies and prepares the team for the start of the sprint. Without this planning, there is a very real risk that the team would lack focus and fail to align on what is most important.

Effective agile sprint planning has three key parts; a sprint goal, an understanding of team capacity, and a prioritized set of backlog items. Each element depends on the other for success.

The idea is to align your team around a goal for the next sprint by agreeing on a set of backlog items that are achievable within the sprint and contribute to reaching the sprint goal. Gaining focus and clarity on what you plan to achieve will help your team to work better together and to deliver on objectives.

It is best to start with an agreed sprint goal. You can then prioritize work on the specific set of backlog items that your team has the capacity to complete, and that will contribute to making your sprint goal a reality.

How sprint planning fits within the Scrum process

We’re big fans of the Scrum process, and it’s hugely popular with many software development teams. While agile sprint planning can take many forms within the different agile methodologies, for the purposes of this guide, we’ll focus on agile sprint planning within the Scrum framework.

If your team doesn’t follow Scrum don’t worry — you’ll still find value in our preparation tips, meeting guide, mistakes to avoid, and sprint planning resources.

💡 Learn more: What's the Difference Between Kanban vs. Scrum?

Scrum roles: The people

There are three main roles within a Scrum team.

1. Product Owner
2. Scrum Master
3. Development team

The Product Owner puts in the work upfront. They help prioritize the product backlog items and decide which should move to the sprint backlog. These important decisions guide the goals of the sprint and determine the tasks the team will tackle over the next sprint.

The Scrum Master acts as a guide, they lead meetings that help ensure that the Scrum framework is followed throughout the sprint to keep the team on track. The Scrum Master helps the team get the most out of the entire Scrum process and each individual Scrum ceremony.

The development team is made up of the various people who will complete the work agreed upon during sprint planning.

There are others that you might refer to during sprint planning, such as stakeholders, users, and customers. While these aren’t technically Scrum roles, they play a critical role in product development. Stakeholders should be brought into the process early and often, and customers should always be top-of-mind when making any development decisions. Some teams find User Personas to be a valuable way of keeping user value in focus.

Artifacts: What gets done

Artifacts are the things to get done — different breakdowns of what the team hopes to accomplish:

1. Product backlog
2. Sprint backlog
3. Increments

Product backlog items are the tasks the team believes they need to accomplish in order to complete a product or specific improvement of a product. It is the big master list of everything that the team thinks they need to accomplish. The product backlog is flexible and iterative, and it will evolve as the team learns more about the product, stakeholder feedback, and customer needs.

The sprint backlog is more focused than the product backlog. The product owner moves the most important backlog items from the product backlog to the sprint backlog at the beginning of each sprint based on current issues, priorities, and customer needs. The team aims to complete all of the sprint backlog items over the course of the sprint.

An increment is a concrete stepping stone toward reaching the Product Goal. An increment must be verified as usable in order to provide value, which means that any work completed cannot be considered part of an increment unless it meets the Definition of Done (an agreement among the team of what “done” means). This is a formal description of the state of the increment when it meets the quality standards required of a product. Once the work completed satisfies the agreed Definition of Done, you gain an increment.

Scrum ceremonies: Where Sprint Planning fits

There are a number of ceremonies in Scrum that occur each sprint. This is where sprint planning fits within the Scrum process.

1. Sprint planning
2. Daily scrum (or standup)
3. Sprint review
4. Sprint retrospective

💡 Learn more: Agile Ceremonies: Your Guide to the Four Stages

Sprint planning is the first Scrum ceremony — it prepares the team for the sprint. The planning session sets everything into motion, aligning the team on what’s most important for this sprint. This is when decisions are made and key backlog items are moved from the product backlog to the sprint backlog.

The second ceremony repeats every day of the sprint. Daily standups bring the team together to discuss progress and blockers that might be getting in the way. By getting the concerns out in the open early, the team can avoid the frustration of delays and ensure work continues to flow.

The final two ceremonies happen at the end of the sprint. For the sprint review, the team comes together to determine the success of the sprint based on the “Done” work completed. It’s also a chance to bring in stakeholders to gather feedback on what's been accomplished so far. The sprint review ensures customer insights are always top-of-mind, stakeholders continually see progress, and guarantees the product never strays too far from what the stakeholders are looking for.

The sprint retrospective gathers critical insights from team members about how the sprint went. What went well, what didn’t go so well, and what could be improved upon for next time? These valuable insights are what makes Scrum agile — the team is always thinking critically about the process and looking for ways to improve the work and how they work together.

We’ll talk about these ceremonies in more detail below when we discuss what happens after the sprint planning meeting.

The benefits of agile sprint planning

Agile sprint planning is a powerful meeting that should not be overlooked or underestimated. It is an opportunity to:

• Bring the whole team together and align around common goals
• Set context by starting the sprint with clear priorities
• Identify potential roadblocks before they occur
• Bring stakeholder feedback into the planning process
• Learn from previous sprints by considering sprint review and retrospective insights
• Consider team capacity and adjust accordingly to ensure that goals are achievable and that the team isn’t overcommitted in the upcoming sprint
• Account and plan for dependencies that may impact the flow of work.

How to prepare for a sprint planning meeting

We know we said that a sprint begins with sprint planning, but there are actually a few important steps you must take in order to prepare for the planning session. Unfortunately, you do need to do a little planning for the planning meeting.

Backlog refinement

Backlog grooming or refinement keeps your backlog healthy, up-to-date, and ready for sprint planning. A refined backlog will help ensure your team’s planning time is used efficiently and effectively since you won't have to waste time adding details to the backlog that could have been completed in advance before everyone came together.

The product manager should groom the backlog a few days before the sprint planning meeting to make sure it’s ready.

Tips for maintaining a healthy backlog:

• Ensure stories are in order of priority
• Prioritize items that bring the customer the most value
• Add detail to the highest-priority backlog items
• Split any user stories that are too big
• Delete any user stories that aren’t relevant anymore
• Create new user stories based on new or clearer needs
• Add items based on new stakeholder feedback
• Make adjustments based on bug fixes
• Assign more accurate estimates

💡 Learn more: Essential Checklist for Effective Backlog Refinement (and What To Avoid)

Be consistent

A consistent meeting time that’s scheduled well in advance will ensure that the entire Scrum team keeps the time slot open. Book your sprint planning meeting on the same day and at the same time every sprint so that no one forgets or double books.

Sprint planning is not a meeting to be shuffled around, delayed, or ignored — sprint planning meetings are essential to the success of every sprint. Ask your team about a specific, recurring time to meet, and ensure it works for everyone.

How to run a sprint planning meeting

While the agile method is flexible and collaborative, it isn’t chaotic; everything needs to begin with a plan.

1. Stick to a set sprint planning meeting duration

As with any kind of meeting, the team can be easily sidetracked without a timebox. After all, talking about the work that needs to be completed is often easier than actually completing it. It’s the Scrum Master’s job to keep the team on track and make sure the time limit isn’t exceeded.

Go into the sprint planning meeting well-prepared; a clear agenda and a well-refined backlog mean your team can get straight to planning.

Set a realistic timebox for the meeting and stick to it. We recommend that you avoid scheduling more than 2-3 hours for a sprint planning meeting, but as you become more skilled in sprint planning, you’ll better understand the length of time that works for you and your team.

2. Use estimates to make realistic decisions

You want your team to be as productive as possible, but overloading them can actually hinder productivity and focus. Unreasonable expectations are demotivating and overcommitted team members are more likely to make mistakes.

You need to understand the effort and time it will take to complete the goals you set out to accomplish for each sprint. Agile estimation techniques and story points provide a better understanding of team capacity, individual capacity, and what a reasonable workload looks like. Reasonable and realistic goals will help your team stay motivated and support a consistent flow of work.

3. Define clear goals and outcomes

What does the team aim to accomplish between now and the end of the sprint? Set clearly defined goals and outcomes that everyone understands. Do your goals align with what you learned from past sprints? Do they align with customer needs? Does everyone agree on what the next sprint will (roughly) look like?

Don’t assume that everyone is on the same page. Ask questions and encourage your team to speak up if anything is unclear. It’s better to clear up discrepancies or misunderstandings now rather than once the work begins.

Setting sprint goals effectively involves following the SMART framework, a well-regarded strategy in project management and goal-setting across various industries. The acronym SMART stands for:

• Specific: Clearly define what you aim to achieve. Avoid vague goals by pinpointing precise outcomes.
• Measurable: Establish criteria for measuring progress. This helps in tracking accomplishments and identifying areas that need adjustment.
• Achievable: Aim for goals that are challenging yet attainable with the resources at hand. Overambitious targets can demoralize a team if not realistic.
• Relevant: Ensure that each goal aligns with the broader objectives of the project. Irrelevant tasks can divert energy from what's truly important.
• Time-bound: Set a clear deadline to maintain urgency and focus. Sprint goals must coincide with the sprint’s limited timeline to ensure timely completion.

In practice, applying the SMART framework to sprint goals means your team is synchronized and focused on priorities that drive the project forward efficiently. By keeping goals relevant and achievable within the sprint's timeframe, you avoid misallocation of efforts and ensure progress is aligned with overall project ambitions.

Post your sprint goal somewhere that is easily accessible so that the team can refer back to it throughout the sprint.

💡 Learn more: How to Make the Most of Your Sprint Goals

4. Decide what it means to be ‘done’

What does “done” mean for any given backlog item, increment, product issue, or product as a whole? The team and your stakeholders need to agree on what done looks like in order to set realistic goals that meet the expectations of everyone involved.

As you set goals and choose which backlog items to complete for the next sprint, be clear about what it means to meet and complete the goals you want to accomplish.

5. Align sprint goals with product goals

Sprint goals should always align with your broader product goals. Your sprint may take a specific direction depending on current product issues, bug fixes, or customer concerns, but it’s important to keep an eye on the big picture.

Choose backlog items with care — make sure they relate to the larger product goal and that each works in sync to move development forward. Overlooking product goals in sprint planning could mean that each sprint looks more like a random selection of to-do lists that don’t connect back to customer needs, relate to product goals, or help you reach important increments. The result will feel like a lack of progress, which risks disengaging the team and other important stakeholders, like your users.

What happens next?

Now that the planning is done, you’re ready to implement your plan and complete the work. But that doesn’t mean that team members go off and work in isolation.

Daily scrum (or stand-up)

The daily scrum or stand-up is an opportunity for a collaborative agile team to maintain progress. It should be a quick check-in at the start of each day.

The team will discuss what has been done in the past 24 hours, any roadblocks they might have hit, and what the team hopes to accomplish the next day.

This critical check-in helps the team stay on the same page, helps to ensure the continued flow of work, and keeps the team on track to achieve sprint goals.

Sprint review

A sprint review meeting takes place at the end of a sprint. It's a chance for the team to review all of the “Done” issues for that period. The sprint review determines whether or not the goal for the sprint was achieved.

It’s a chance to demonstrate shippable working product increments to the team, and also an opportunity to bring in stakeholder feedback. This feedback gives you valuable insights to assess if you’re on the right track, or need to make changes in the next sprint. The sprint review is also excellent preparation for the next backlog grooming and sprint planning session.

💡 Learn more: Introduction to Sprint Reviews

Sprint retrospective

While the sprint review looks at what was accomplished and how to move forward, the retrospective examines your processes and how the team is working together.

What did you learn during the previous sprint? While retrospectives can take many forms, the goal is to discover what worked well, what didn't go so well, and what could be improved upon next time. Your team will use the insights gathered in the retrospective to improve how you work together and deliver value to customers in the future.

💡 Learn more: 5 Steps to Holding Effective Sprint Retrospectives

Agile sprint planning mistakes

It’s easy to fall into bad habits, especially as deadlines and product launch dates approach. Avoid these common agile planning mistakes to ensure your team is always making the most of the agile methodology and the Scrum process.

Unrealistic expectations

Choosing unattainable goals sets your whole team up for failure. Failing to meet your sprint goals sprint after sprint is damaging for team motivation and morale.

Use estimates to set reasonable goals as best you can. Consider team capacity, factoring in your past knowledge of how long tasks take to complete, how the team works, and potential roadblocks that could arise along the way.

Lack of context

Your team will benefit from an understanding of how the issues they’re working on fit into the bigger picture.

Depending on the tool you’re using to plan and manage your work, it can be difficult to see the contextual detail needed to plan and work with clarity. The more items you have, the more difficult and overwhelming it will be to organize and prioritize. Use tools that allow you to add context, depth, and customer insights with clean functionality to adapt your plan to the needs of your team and stakeholders.

Neglecting your backlog

We mentioned this point when we talked about what you need to do to prepare for sprint planning. It’s worth mentioning again because it’s a common mistake.

When you go into a sprint planning meeting without a well-managed backlog, you lack the clarity you need to plan effectively. Your time is valuable, and so is the time of your team, so it should be treated with care and used effectively.

A well-managed backlog is DEEP:

• Detailed appropriately
• Estimated
• Emergent
• Prioritized

💡 Learn more: The 4 Characteristics of a Good Product Backlog

Not allowing the plan to adapt

When you plan your sprint, you’ll do everything you can to prioritize the most important tasks for the length of the sprint. It’s important to try to stick to the plan as best you can, but you also need to adapt as you acquire new information.

Be ready to make changes on the fly should you hit roadblocks or acquire new information about customer needs, concerns, or product issues.

Failing to understand stakeholders

You need to understand the goals and priorities of stakeholders to be successful. Just because you’re happy with what you’ve accomplished doesn't mean your stakeholders will too.

Ensure your stakeholders are brought into your process early and often and help them understand how you work to provide them value. Gather feedback from stakeholders regularly to ensure your goals are aligned. A good time for this is during the sprint review. Just make sure those insights are transferred over to your next planning meeting.

Not choosing tools with a customer-centric approach

Successful product development delivers what the customer needs and wants. To build for your customers, it helps to use tools for planning and work management that makes it easy to keep them top-of-mind. Incorporating user story maps and customer personas into your planning helps you and your team prioritize the work that will deliver the most value first.

💡 Learn more: 10 tips for more effective user personas

Failing to incorporate retrospective insights into planning

Retrospectives are the best thing you can do to help your team work better together. During a retrospective, you're asking your team to be open and honest about how things went over the course of the sprint so that you can learn from each other.

Failing to learn from those insights means that the collective time spent in the retrospective has been wasted, and the feedback that your team has shared is devalued.

Incorporating the learnings you gain from a retrospective into your next planning session and into the next sprint, will support your team to improve every time, helping them gain work satisfaction and deliver better outcomes.

Virtual vs. in-person sprint planning

The advantages of remote work also bring challenges for collaborative planning. No matter the way your team chooses to meet, whether virtually, in person, or a combination of both, it’s important that you choose tools that meet the needs of your team.

Tips for virtual sprint planning:

• Be really prepared - communicate plans clearly ahead of time, so that everyone has clear expectations.
• Use a video conferencing tool that allows for breakout sessions
• Set up the interactive online resources you plan to use and include links in the meeting request.
• Online discussions don’t start as naturally as they would in person, so share discussion topics ahead of time, and consider preparing some ice-breakers.
• Ensure that you’ve accounted for time differences for teams that span time zones.
• Tech issues arise no matter how much advanced planning and testing you do. Always expect the unexpected.

Tips for in-person sprint planning:

• Book a meeting room with plenty of space for your team, and consider separate spaces for breakout sessions.
• Ensure that your meeting room will accommodate a shared view of your sprint plan - do you need a wall for sticky notes, or a screen to share a digital tool?
• If some of your team members work remotely, it’s difficult to involve them in the same way, so consider how this might work for your team. They won’t be able to read a whiteboard or sticky notes as easily, so a digital solution may be best.
• If you choose to plan your sprint ‘on the wall’, be sure to nominate someone to transcribe your plan into your work management tool at the end of the planning meeting.

No matter where your planning takes place, always remember to prepare your backlog ahead of time so that you can have focused and informed discussions during sprint planning.

Additional agile resources

We’re continually adding to our content library, which is filled with resources, how-to guides, product updates, and more.

📚 Add these to your list:

• Easy Agile Podcast Ep.20: The importance of the Team Retrospective
• Easy Agile Podcast Ep.18 Top qualities of an agile leader and team
• Easy Agile Podcast Ep.16 Enabling high performing agile teams with Adaptavist
• Being agile vs doing agile
• The Ultimate Guide to User Story Mapping
• The Ultimate Guide to Buyer Personas
• The Ultimate Guide to PI Planning [2022 SAFe Edition]

Using Easy Agile to improve sprint planning

Make your sprint planning smooth and effective with Easy Agile TeamRhythm. Transform your flat product backlog into a dynamic, flexible, and visual representation of the work to be done. Seamlessly integrated with Jira, with TeamRhythm you can:

• View your Jira stories, tasks, and bugs in context, aligned beneath their epics on the story map
• Drag and drop Jira issues from the backlog into a sprint
• Create new issues right on the story map
• Estimate issues on the story map, and gauge capacity with story point totals in each sprint swimlane
• Publish the sprint goal on each sprint swimlane, so it’s always top of mind
• Use filters to focus on the stories and issues that are most important now
• Group epics by a third level of hierarchy, to easily see how the work in focus contributes to the bigger picture

Easy Agile TeamRhythm also supports team retrospectives, with flexible and intuitive retrospectives boards created for every sprint. You can add retrospective items right from the sprint swimlane, so you don’t forget any important points. And you can turn retrospective action items into Jira issues that can be scheduled for future sprints, so you’re always getting better at what you do, and delivering for your customers.

Thanks for reading our ultimate agile sprint planning guide! If you have any questions about this guide, our other content, or our products, reach out to our team at any time. We love hearing from you.

We’ll continue to update this guide as we gain more agile planning insights, techniques, tools, and best practices.

Story points can be a little confusing and are often misunderstood. Story points are an important part of user story mapping, and many agile teams use them when planning their work. But they aren't as simple as adding numbers to tasks or estimating how long a job will take.

Even if you’ve been using story points for a while, you’ll find that different teams and organizations will use them differently.  

So, let’s define story points, discuss why they’re so useful for agile teams, and talk about some of the different ways teams implement them in story mapping and sprint planning.

What are user story points?

Story points are a useful unit of measurement in agile, and an important part of the user story mapping process. You assign a number to each user story to estimate the total effort required to bring a feature or function to life.

When to estimate story points

User stories can be estimated during user story mapping, backlog refinement, or during sprint planning.

Once a user story has been defined, mapped to the backbone, and prioritized, it's time to estimate the story points. It is a good idea to work with your team to do this, as each team member plays a different role in different stories, and knows the work involved in UX, design, development, testing, and launching. Collaborating on story point estimation will also help you spot dependencies early.

It is best to assign story points to each user story before you sequence them into releases or sprints. This allows you to assess the complexity, effort, and uncertainty of each user story in comparison to others on their backlog, and to make informed decisions about the work you decide to commit to each sprint or release.

How to estimate user story points

When estimating story points, you're looking at the total effort involved in making that feature or functionality live so that it can deliver value to the customer. Your team will need to discuss questions like:

• How complex is the work?
• How much work is needed?
• What are the technical abilities of the team?
• What are the risks?
• What parts are we unsure about?
• What do we need in place before we can start or finish?
• What could go wrong?

Tip: If you're having trouble estimating a story or the scope of work is overwhelming, you might need to break your story down into smaller parts to make multiple user stories.

What is a story point worth?

This is where story points can get a little confusing, as story points don’t have a set universal value. You kind of have to figure out what they’re worth to you and your team (yep, real deep and meaningful stuff).

Here’s how it works:

• Each story is assigned a certain number of story points
• Points will mean different things to different teams or organizations
• 1 story point for your team might not equal the same amount of effort involved in 1 story point for another team
• The amount of effort involved in 1 story point should remain stable for your team each sprint and it should remain stable from one story to another
• 2 story points should equal double the effort compared to 1 story point
• 3 story points should equal triple the effort compared to 1 story point… and so on

The number you assign doesn't matter - what matters is the ratio. The story points should help you demonstrate relative effort between each story and each sprint.

Estimating story points for the first time

Because story points are relative, you need to give yourself some baseline estimates for the first time you do story point estimation. This will give you a frame of reference for all future stories.

Start by choosing stories of several different sizes:

• One very small story
• One medium sized story
• One big story

...a bit like t-shirt sizes.

Then assign points to each of these baseline stories. Your smallest story might be 1. If your medium story requires 3 times more effort, then it should be 3. If your big story requires 10 times the effort, it should be 10. These numbers will depend on the type of stories your team normally works on, so your baseline story numbers might look different to these.

The important thing is that you’ll be able to use these baseline stories to estimate all your future stories by comparing the relative amount of effort involved.

Over time, you and your team will find estimating user stories becomes easier as your shared understanding of the work develops. This is where story points become most valuable, helping your team align expectations and plan more effectively.

Make estimation easier

An app for Jira like Easy Agile TeamRhythm makes it easy to see team commitment for each sprint or version, with estimate totals on each swimlane.

Using the Fibonacci sequence for story point estimation

Some teams use the Fibonacci sequence (1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, etc.) for their story point estimates, rather than staying linear or allowing teams to use any number (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, etc.).

This has its benefits. For example, if you're looking at a story and trying to estimate whether it's a 5, 8, or 13, it's much quicker and easier to come up with an answer than trying to land on the right number between, say, 4-15. You'll likely reach a consensus much more quickly.

This also means you won't be able to average the team's story points to finalize the estimation. Instead, you'll need to discuss the work and decide on the best estimate from a limited set of options.

But it does limit your options - if you have a story that’s more effort than 34, but less than 55, your estimate might be less accurate.

Using story points to estimate velocity

After some time working together most teams will have a good idea about how much effort is involved in each story point.

Of course, timing isn't exact - there's a bell curve, and story points are designed to be an estimate of effort, not time.

But story points (and knowing their approximate timing) can be useful when it comes to figuring out how much your team can get done each sprint.

You should be able to estimate about as many story points your team can manage during a two-week sprint, or whatever timeframe you’re working to.

For example, if your team can usually get through 3 story points per day, this might add up to 30 story points across a two-week sprint. This is your velocity.

Velocity is useful for user story mapping and sprint planning. When mapping your user stories to sprints or versions, you can check the total story points and make sure it matches up with your velocity so you’re not over- or under-committed.

As you can see there are a few different methods for estimating work. The best advice is to be conservative and not overload the team.

Over time, your estimations should become more accurate.

Using Story Points in Scrum, Kanban, and Extreme Programming

Story points are central to estimation and planning processes in many agile methodologies. Scrum and Extreme Programming (XP) rely heavily on story points to gauge the effort and complexity of user stories.

Scrum teams use story points during sprint planning to decide which tasks to include in the upcoming sprint, encouraging discussion that leads to shared context and understanding of the work.

Extreme Programming on the other hand, uses story points to assess the size of features, enabling teams to prioritize and allocate resources effectively. Teams using Kanban can benefit from story points by using them to set work-in-progress limits and optimize the flow of tasks across the board.

While the specific practices may differ, story points can help encourage team collaboration and a more predictable flow of work.