What are story points?

A story point is a unit of relative size. Instead of estimating a piece of work in hours or days, the team compares it with work it has already done: “this is about twice the size of that.” The number captures effort, complexity, and uncertainty together.

Why relative, not hours

People are poor at predicting how long a task will take, and fairly good at judging whether one task is bigger than another. Story points use the second skill.

• Points don’t depend on who does the work. A story is a 3 whether a senior or a junior engineer picks it up; the difference shows up in how fast the team finishes points, not in the estimate.
• Estimating stays quick. Comparing a story with a known one takes seconds. Breaking it into hours takes much longer and is rarely more accurate.
• Points turn into dates through measurement. Once the team knows how many points it finishes per iteration — its velocity — it can forecast when a set of stories will be done.

An estimate is a sizing conversation, not a promise. If the team disagrees on a number, the discussion usually turns up a misunderstanding about the story, which is the more useful outcome.

Scales

Teams pick a short scale so that estimates stay coarse. Common ones:

• Fibonacci — 0, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13. The gaps grow with size, because big stories are less certain.
• Linear — 0, 1, 2, 3. A small scale for teams that split work finely.
• T-shirt sizes — S, M, L (sometimes XS and XL).

A story too big for the top of the scale is a signal to split it into smaller stories.

Estimating as a team

A common technique is planning poker: each person picks an estimate privately, everyone reveals at once, and the highest and lowest estimates explain their reasoning before the team settles on a number. Revealing at once keeps the first voice from anchoring the rest.

Estimate before the story is started, once the team understands what “done” means for it — the acceptance criteria. See User stories and iteration planning.

How East Agile Tracker does it

• Features take points by default. Bugs and chores stay unestimated unless the project turns on Points for bugs and chores. See Estimate features.
• Three scales ship: Fibonacci (0, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13), East Agile (0, 1, 2, 3), and 3-Point (1, 2, 3 for Small / Medium / Large). The scale is chosen per project; changing it later does not remap existing estimates. See Points.
• Points feed velocity. A story’s points count toward velocity once it reaches the project’s done state, and velocity sizes the next iterations. See Velocity.
• Unestimated stories are searchable. The is:unestimated filter lists features that still need a number. See Search and filters.

Further reading

• What is velocity? — how points become a forecast.
• Scrum vs Kanban — where estimation fits in each method.
• eXtreme Programming — the method story points come from.