Points: conclusions and hypothesis

As anyone with time to spare will know I’ve recently spent a lot of time thinking, and writing about story points. This was in response to Vasco Duarte’s Story Points Considered Harmful blog from a month or two back. For completeness here are the links:

• Vasco Duarte: Story Points Considered Harmful
• Story points considered harmful? 1 of 4 - Journey's start
• Story points 2 of 4 - Duarte's arguments
• Story points 3 of 4 - An example
• Points 4 of 4 - Breakdown

Some conclusions I draw from this:

• There is far more work to do on Abstract/Story Points than we, as a community have done to date
• There are many more nuances to the assignment of points, the breakdown of work and the management of the outcomes than I think I previously realised
• I must go and see what Mike Cohn actually says about Story Points before I say any more about his approach
• Stable teams are crucial - but then I’ve been saying this all along

Given all this I’d like to pose a few questions and hypothesis of my own

Q1: When does the correlation between story points and number of cards become stable?

Hypothesis: I would expect a team new to “Agile”, stories and points to start off with erratic point scores and number of stories complete per sprint. Thus I would not expect the correlation to be stable. As a team settles down I would expect points to become stable, then stories completed and thus establish a correlation.

Q2: Is there any serious research into story points out there?

In the same line as my recent post “Agile: Where’s the Evidence?” it would be interesting to know if anyone has examined the use and accuracy of story points. Again, I should seclude myself in an academic library and review the data. But again, I have to find time.

More problematic, I suspect, OK another hypothesis, that some of the reason why story points work - which I listed in part 3 of my posts - will make it very difficult to determine if they are accurate because the thing story points are measuring will change.