Chapter 8. Estimating User Stories

No project can go very long before someone starts asking “When will you be done?” The best approach for estimating stories would be one that:

  • allows us to change our mind whenever we have new information about a story
  • works for both epics and smaller stories
  • doesn’t take a lot of time
  • provides useful information about our progress and the work remaining
  • is tolerant of imprecision in the estimates
  • can be used to plan releases

Story Points

An approach that satisfies each of these goals is to estimate in story points. A nice feature of story points is that each team defines them as they see fit. One team may decide to define a story point as an ideal day of work (that is, a day without any interruptions whatsoever—no ...

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