How to estimate duplicated/repetitive issues but that are time-consuming

[Deleted user]

Dear Jira Community,

I am not sure if this was already asked here before. One of the teams that I am currently supporting often works on new feature issues and later rolls it out to other countries. The complexity is rather low but rolling out to other countries still takes quite a lot of time. Thus, I would like to ask you how should the team estimate the issues for the other countries.

For example, the first issue has 13 story points. The other issues to roll out to other countries in terms of complexity could have 2, for example, but are still going to take a day to complete. This can mislead the team's velocity.

What are the best practices in this case?

Thank you very much in advance!

[Bill Sheboy · Accepted solution]

Hi @[deleted] 

In my experience, there aren't "best practices" for such a use case, as teams are different in what they mean by their story point sizing and velocity.  For example:

• do your sizes reflect effort, complexity, uncertainty, etc. or some combination of these characteristics?
• some things are complex to implement, and take a small amount of effort
• while others are simple and take a lot of effort
• while others still are balanced in different aspects

A saying from Mike Cohn to help agile teams in this area is "estimate size; derive duration".  Confirm the team's shared understanding of what "story points" mean to them, stay focused by minimizing work in progress (WIP) to finish what you start, and let velocity appear as it will.  When there are outliers and variation, pay attention to discuss them during retrospectives and experiment to improve.

Kind regards,
Bill

[Deleted user]

Hello @Bill Sheboy,

Thank you very much for your answer, which helps really helps!

Best,

Jacinto