Using both story point and hours estimation in Scrum

James Sywilok

During Backlog refinement, I use story point estimating as my  unit of measure.

During Sprint planning, I identify each team member's sprint capacity in hours to avoid over commitment of manpower to project specific work,  Therefore, I have each team member break down each of their stories into tasks with associated hours with the total amount of work not to exceed the individual' s capacity. Using this approach, my teams quickly improved their story estimates giving us more dependable Team Velocity and the Team Capacity helped improving the predictably value delivery cadence. 

Is it possible to configure jira for the use of both units of measure?

Petter Gonçalves

Hello @James Sywilok

Welcome to the Atlassian Community!

You can absolutely use two different metrics (Story Points or Time tracking) to measure the estimation for your team. The only requirement to achieve it would be to use a Classic Scrum project, not Next-gen.

There are some reports that will display different data depending on which estimation you configured under Board settings > Estimations, however, the estimation is configured per board and can be changed at anytime you want to display the data you need.

That being said, Jira's free plan does not have a tool to clearly measure your team capacity based on the time estimation, so your Scrum manager would need to be conscious when configuring each Sprint, analyzing the reports and checking if the work estimated is matching your team's capacity.

If you are looking for a way to better manage your capacity, Jira Premium subscription provides you with the capacity planning tool of Advanced Roadmaps. You can check the link below for billing details of Jira Premium Subscription or to start a free trial:

Jira Premium 

For more details about estimation and issue tracking, please check the documentation below:

Configure estimation and tracking 

Let us know if you have any questions.