How best to track points estimates vs actuals

Question

For our Kanban teams there has been discussion around adding a custom field in Jira to track actual points vs estimated points that the dev assigns prior to starting work.

The idea is that a developer would put an estimate in at the start and once finished he/she would put in the actual.

1) Does Jira automatically track when points are changed so that no additional field is required?

2) If so, what are the filter parameters to help show any points changed and by how much?

3) Reporting on a teams velocity would require we have the "story points" field showing the "actual" number and not the customer field, correct?

4) Lastly, is velocity of a team, the points they estimated or the actual number? We have a small debate on this internally and I'd like to provide confirmed guidance.

Many thanks, this is a great resource/community board for help.

Bill Sheboy · Answer

Hi @Lisa Besteni

Yes, and...to what Josh suggests:

Perhaps do not resize; that makes permanent a work-around for the symptoms and does not help with the underlying causes.

Instead consider a retrospective every couple of weeks and review the completed items to learn what was different/special for items that did not match the team's understanding of the work.  Ask "why" and consider how to experiment to improve sizing in the future.

Kind regards,
Bill

Janis Plume (eazyBI) · Answer

Hi,

eazyBI app for Jira allows tracking the story point changes. eazyBI imports all the story points history and allows seeing the changes and story points at any time in history.

Please, find here a couple of sample reports on how to report on story points in sprints.

You can track the balance of story points, including the estimate changes. Similarly, you can create your custom burndown charts, considering the estimate changes during the sprint:

https://eazybi.com/accounts/1000/cubes/Issues/reports/168153-story-points-balance-by-sprints

https://eazybi.com/accounts/1000/cubes/Issues/reports/50050-story-points-burn-down-in-sprint

Kindly,

Janis, eazyBI support

Yuliia_Borivets__SaaSJet_ · Answer

Hi @Lisa Besteni

Story points are helpful if you need to estimate the number of different factors:

* the difficulty of the job
* the volume of work
* experience completing similar tasks
* possible risks or uncertainties, etc.

SPs are flexible and relative. It takes some time to get used to the estimation.

Within our team, we don't change SPs. If we see that number was too small or too big we consider that for future tasks. It takes time to figure out what your actual velocity is.

If you still would like to change SPs, those changes are fixed in the issue history. My team has developed an add-on that might be helpful to see changes for the list of issues. You can filter by project, sprint, assignees, label, date range, etc.

Here is how we fix changes with the Issue History app: