Story Points Explained - Part 0: Introduction

One of the most exotic concepts of Agility is story points. Let me start off by saying that story points have not made it to the Manifesto. At least not yet. You can do Agility without implementing them.

I do think they are better than most of the alternatives out there. It is however not an easy concept.

Here's how I would go about understanding story points:

• Part 1: The Whys

Overview and some history behind story points. Also what are the problems they can actually solve.

• Part 2: Usage

Understand how to use them in a regular Scrum Project.

• Part 3: Vs other estimation methods

There are many alternatives to story points. This post will cover other ways of doing it and how they compare to story points.

• Part 4: Induction

We're going to focus on some easy techniques which I've found helpful for implementations in Agile teams.

• Part 5: The poker

Using Planning poker together with Story Points is Agility at its best. I'm going to cover some tips for running efficient Planning poker sessions.

• Part 6: Roadmap planning

In this post my focus will be on communicating at a strategic level using story points. We're going to look at which expectations and agreements you will need in order to make this work.

• Part 7: Pitfalls

Life is not interesting if we don't end on a bad note. :))

I've seen people use them in ways which defeat their purpose. I'd like to briefly present 3 of the most common "mistakes" teams make when adopting story points.