"Let's
use Story Points
Why?
We
are following agile now
Yayy..
story points!
How
many hours these epics, stories will take?
But
we are using story points..
Yeah,
but we still need to plan. Hours are better for that. 1 SP - 5 hours. ok?"
Heard
this story of story points many times.
-----
It
is important to understand why do we need Story Points? Is it mandatory for
being agile? Are hours prohibited?
The
key motive for story points or hours is that we need to estimate the work, so
we can tell what can be achieved in given time. Hence, we try to estimate.
Hours are used since long because time is easy measure for us, and we can
quantify easily, 'accurately'.
However,
it become challenging when we found that even after best try, it is hard to
estimate the time. It is more and more true in non-mechanical activities, where
outcome depends on many intangible factors like skills, information available,
mood, motivation, environment and so on.
If
estimates can not be done accurately, then why to estimate. Let us just keep
working and ship whatever is done. And this is also one of the philosophy and
may work in specific setup. However, most still need a roadmap with understanding
of possibilities which feed into overall plan of business.
'Possibility'
is the key word here. We gradually understood that accurate estimate is not
semantically and practically right. However, we can try to have best guess
based on available information, which reflects the possibilities. As long as,
we accept this fact, that we are talking about possibilities, hours or story
points or tshirt size or anything else works.
If
we consider this, ultimately, it boils down to 'common understanding'. Common
understanding that when we are estimating, we are talking about possibility. If
we all are good with this, any unit can be used for estimation.
Building
up on this understanding, let us talk about common understanding. How easy or
difficult is it to have common understanding with many people of different
skills set, experiences, background, motives, different stakes and
responsibilities. There are so many psychological factors, which makes it
difficult to have this common understanding, more so if unit of measurement
(hours) is traditionally used for accurate outcome. As soon as, we say x hours,
it triggers a mental understanding of accurate number and then we want to see
that getting materialized. People usually understand that estimates are just
estimates. But as soon as we attach it with Hours kind of definitive measure,
it build up expectations of accuracy. This is the key challenge to address.
