Must hours or story points be used for ALL projects in a JIRA Agile account?

Question

Hello, everyone.  My client uses JIRA Agile to manage 20+ projects.  One group wants to use hours to estimate effort on tasks and user stories, but they want to continue using story points for sprint planning.

Is it possible to set "Hours" as the unit of measure for task estimate fields (Original Estimate, Remaining Estimate) at the Project level?  Or must it be set at the account level for all projects that use the same JIRA Agile account?

Lori Quarnstrom · Answer

Thanks for the answer, Nic.  I suspected as much, but wanted to ask because JIRA Agile has so many other helpful features, and someone may have requested it in the past.

We're training the client teams to estimate work using story points.  That is going well.  However, as they learn and grow their Agile process, it would be helpful to watch the evolution of story point value, as compared to the hours it takes to complete sub-tasks and the team's velocity.  We'll continue with story points for now.

Nic Brough -Adaptavist- · Answer

No, you can use neither, either or both on a project and it's a project choice on how they use it.  You can even take it down to issue level (e.g. hours on tasks and stories, story points on bugs).

However, your boards can only use one or the other, so you may find it a little odd trying to do both on the same team.