How can I estimate a mixed portfolio (Scrum/Kanban) using story points if upon plan creation SPs are not available as an option?

German Gonzalez-Amado December 19, 2015

This question is in reference to Atlassian Documentation: Settings estimates with story points

When you are creating a plan, and you want to manage a mixed portfolio (Scrum/Kanban), Story Points is not available as an option for estimation purposes; the only options available are Days or Hours.

Story points are inherently focused on scheduling and planning on a team basis, and we use teams not only for Scrum but for Kanban as well, and we would like to manage them keeping this estimation strategy for our mixed approach.

What should I do if I want to estimate that mixed portfolio (Scrum/Kanban) using story points?

Ideas?

Thank you in advance for your inputs.

3 answers

3 votes
Andrew Feller September 1, 2016

Why is this the answer instead of someone saying the feature should be built into all Agile boards?  Story points are just another mechanism for estimation, so there is no reason why the estimates on tickets couldn't be used for prediction purposes.  I'm going to very disappointed if this continues to be the way Atlassian addresses product demands.

Deleted user July 9, 2021

i dont see the answer above, its a blue box. what was the answer?

1 vote
Martin Suntinger
Atlassian Team
Atlassian Team members are employees working across the company in a wide variety of roles.
December 20, 2015

One option I've seen several users apply is to set the plan to story points, and configure also the Kanban teams as "Scrum" in Portfolio, with a 1 week iteration length. Then based on the Kanban teams' throughput estimate a "velocity" for how many points are achieved in a week and use this for longer term planning. 

For a rough roadmap, it does not matter that much if the Kanban team's forecast is on a weekly cadence, or day-to-day as long as the rough capacity and throughput is right. 

0 votes
Phill Fox
Community Leader
Community Leader
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December 20, 2015

An extension to the solution proposed by @Martin Suntinger is to create both a Scrum and Kanban board for the same project. Then you can manage issues through both approaches.

A couple of configuration changes I would recommend though are as follows.

  1. Change the configuration of the Kanban board card and detail views to show Story Points.
  2. Add a quickfilter to remove all items from the Kanban board that have a sprint allocated 
    image2015-12-20 22:32:35.png
    you could also make this part of the filter for the board if you never want to see items that have been allocated to sprints.

By doing the above you will be able to quickly see the Story Points and use it for understanding the workload at any point in time. However, this will not on its own allow you to report or plan with Story Points it will just give you visibility during the actual day-day activity.

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