When working in an Agile environment you will often be required to provide estimate for story points. Most teams assign story points from the following numeric scale, based on a Fibonacci sequence (series of numbers where a number is found by adding up the two numbers before it).

3, 5, 8, 13, 20, 40, 100

This gives a good range of values with clear differences between each. I.e. it’s easy to perceive the difference between 3-8 as opposed to 1-2.

Story points are a unit of measurement reflecting a culmination of effort, complexity and doubt for the given story. They are relative to each other. It is important to avoid falling into the trap of attempting to compare Story Points to hours or any real-world unit of time.

So how do we estimate Story Points?

First create all of your Stories, breaking them down into relatively small tasks (this will help the estimation process). Next choose three Stories that you consider to require least, average and most amount of effort to complete. These will be your benchmarks.

Although inconvenient, point estimation is best done with the whole team. I like to use planning poker cards to help with the estimation process. Each team member is given a set a cards marked with the Story point values. Starting with the first Story, each member holds up a planning poker card indicating their estimated point value. The team members are then asked to explain their reasoning and a consensus is reached.

Once a Story has been assigned a value, find a Story with a similar value. How do they compare? This might cause you to reassess your assigned point values. This method is called triangulation.

Once all Stories have been assigned points, quickly reassess them against each other to ensure you don’t want to make any adjustments.

With your benchmarks established, compare the remaining Stories and Tasks to establish their relative effort.