Account for overestimated story points?

Marko Galesic

I just completed a story that was estimated at three points. The work ended up actually being about a point of work.

Is there a way of representing the actual amount work a story took in a case like this? I'm concerned that velocity could get inflated.

Bill Sheboy

Hi @Marko Galesic  -- Welcome to the Atlassian Community!

Well, you could ask your site admin to add a custom field to allow people to track "what we think the actual story point size was after we finished the work", or perhaps a shorter name.  ;^)

To me, that sounds like a long-term solution to a potentially short-term opportunity.  Perhaps consider reviewing the completed items in your team's retrospective, and asking "what was different about these items which took more/less effort or had more/less complexity than we thought?"  That conversation may lead to improvements, eliminating the need to track a second estimate and to wonder about velocity impacts.

Best regards,

Bill