Agile & TeamworkBeginner
Story Points
PronunciationSTOR-ee POYNT-s
Definition
Story points are a unit of measure used in Agile to estimate the overall effort required to complete a user story. They represent a relative scale considering complexity, risk, and the amount of work involved rather than absolute time.
Where you hear it
During sprint planning meetings, backlog grooming sessions, or when discussing team velocity.
Examples
We assigned five story points to this task because it involves complex database migrations.
The team decided that this user story is too large and needs to be broken down into smaller story points.
Common mistake
Treating story points as direct equivalents to hours or days, which undermines their purpose as a relative estimation tool.
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