Story points
Story points are a relative estimate of how big a user story is, combining effort, complexity and uncertainty, expressed on a scale the team picks instead of in hours. A five-point story is judged bigger than a three and smaller than an eight. Points size the work for planning, and they do not measure time or value.
The longer version
Teams pick a scale, often the Fibonacci numbers 1, 2, 3, 5, 8 and 13, or a modified Fibonacci scale that adds ½ and rounds the larger values to 20, 40 and 100. The widening gaps admit that large estimates are imprecise. They then choose a reference story everyone understands and size the others against it as bigger, smaller or about the same. Planning poker is a common way to do it, with each person showing a card at once so that the first number spoken does not anchor the rest.
Hours tie a story to one person's speed, which is the problem points exist to avoid. A story that takes a senior developer a day may take a new joiner three, and a point value has to hold for whoever picks it up. Points also absorb uncertainty, so a small change in an unfamiliar part of the system can score higher than a large change in familiar code.
Points belong to the team that assigned them. A five from one team is not a five from another, and a team that changes its members or its reference story shifts its own scale. Adding up the points finished in recent sprints gives the team's velocity, which helps it forecast how much to plan. A team measured on points has a reason to raise them, which empties the number of meaning. The Scrum Guide asks the Developers to size their work and does not require story points.
Common questions
What are story points in agile?
Story points are a unit of relative size that a team assigns to a user story, reflecting effort, complexity and uncertainty together. The unit is the team's own, and its value lies in comparing stories to one another.
Are story points the same as hours?
Story points are not hours. They express relative size, including how uncertain the work is, while hours try to predict how long a particular person will take. Converting points to hours reintroduces the person-specific guess that points avoid.
What scale do story points use?
Many teams use Fibonacci numbers such as 1, 2, 3, 5, 8 and 13, sometimes modified with ½ at the bottom and 20, 40 and 100 at the top, and others use T-shirt sizes or powers of two. The scale only has to be coarse enough that nobody argues over the gap between neighbouring values.
How do you estimate story points?
Pick a familiar reference story, then compare each new story to it, usually in a group discussion or a round of planning poker. A wide spread between estimates is the useful output, because it exposes people assuming different things about the work.
Do you estimate epics in story points?
Stories are the usual unit. An epic can carry a rough size, often on a coarser scale, and the estimate is firmed up only after the epic is split into stories the team can discuss in detail.
Bug reports that arrive ready to triage.
Collect replay, console, network and browser context with the Free plan.