Estimate effort on work in Jira
10 min
Intermediate
By the end of this lesson, you'll be able to:
- Describe how estimation statistics impact scrum boards
- List common estimation statistics
- Configure estimation statistics to match your requirements
Estimate work as a scrum team
A key part of scrum is delivering work in time-boxed increments. In Jira, you can choose how you manage your sprint time with several different estimation statistics.
Estimation statistics enable your team to effectively plan your sprints. You can estimate each small work item, then understand how many of those work items you can accomplish during a sprint.
They’re also used in reports, providing insight into how accurate your estimates were and how your sprint went.
👇 Here’s an example of a team using story points to estimate their work. The story points appear as gray numbers on each work item card.
The estimation feature is only available on scrum boards.
Configure the estimation statistic
Once a scrum team determines their unit of measurement, company-managed board admins can configure the estimation statistic for the board.
To configure the estimation statistic in a company-managed project:
- Open your board.
- Next to the board name, select More actions (represented by •••), then Board settings.
- In the sidebar, select Estimation.
- In the Estimation method field, choose a statistic.
Company-managed board admins need to work with your project and Jira admins to ensure that the field you want to use as an estimation statistic is visible on your work items.
For team-managed projects, project admins set the estimation statistic.
To configure the estimation metric in a team-managed project:
- In the sidebar, next to your project's name, select More actions (represented by ···), then Project settings.
- In the sidebar, select Features.
- For the Estimation feature, click the slider to enable it.
- Select one of the estimation statistics available for the feature.
There are several estimation statistics available to you in Jira. Each has a slightly different purpose. You may prefer one statistic over another, but the most important thing is that your team’s work becomes predictable from sprint to sprint.
👇Click the boxes below to see some of the common estimation statistics available.
Regardless of the estimation method you use, you can start sprints without having an estimate on every work item.
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next lesson
Measure progress on work with time tracking
- Track time in Jira
- Configure time tracking
- How is time tracking calculated?