Estimation
Story Points
A relative estimation unit teams use to express the size of work by combining effort, complexity, uncertainty, and risk rather than counting hours directly.
Why teams use story points
Story points help teams compare work relative to other work instead of pretending early estimates are precise time forecasts. They are meant to compress several dimensions of difficulty into one shared number.
The exact scale matters less than using it consistently enough that the team develops intuition over time.
Where teams go wrong
Story points stop helping when teams secretly convert them into hours, defend them as personal performance metrics, or chase false precision with too many point values.
Related terms
Keep exploring
Velocity
Planning
A historical measure of how much work a team has completed across previous sprints, usually expressed in story points or a similar unit.
Open definition
Planning Poker
Estimation
A collaborative estimation method where participants choose estimates privately, reveal them together, and discuss differences before agreeing on a value.
Open definition