Screw Your Story Points

Roman Estimation and Right-Sizing For the Win

Story Points are usually incredibly distracting for three reasons:

1) People still don't know what a Story Point means. Complexity? Risk? Uncertainty? Effort? Or a sneaky cocktail of all of the above? Even if you do, others might not know. This results in useless discussions that don't change anything.

2) Completing more Story Points isn't better. A higher velocity is like a rapper that can spit words faster. Plus the rapper can easily game the system by increasing the points assigned to every word.

3) Story Points don't affect the amount of work something will take. Optimizing your Story Points estimation doesn't matter. The work will take the same amount of time, regardless of the estimate you produced.

What should we be doing instead?

The most important thing is to slice work intelligently. Small and simple slices of work result in smaller pull requests, better code quality, less risk and better collaboration.

You’re focusing on what matters right now and moving the less important stuff to later. You will discover the real problems that matter sooner as it will be live earlier. You will have more and better information to make decisions. Plus you will make more money, as the cost of delay of the work should be 10X or 100X the cost of developer waiting time.

It doesn't matter of something is estimated a 3,5, 8 or 13. Your estimates will be wrong. What matters is if you're biting off more than you can chew.

Nibble the work with right-sizing and Roman Estimation and discover the reality of the work sooner. That's what really matters.

Better slicing makes the completion of work faster, less risky, and easier.

Better estimation doesn't change a damn thing about the work, just like estimating my height better doesn't change my height.

The work still takes the same amount it would take, the only thing that changed is your expectation of how long the work will take.

Stop wasting time on silly estimation perfection games, focus on right-sizing and intelligent slicing of work with Roman Estimation. Don’t push work to teams as your estimates will be wrong. Pull work and let the reality of the actual effort be your guide.