Original Epic Story Point Estimate vs Actual Epic Story Points on Completion

[Lindsey Arwine]

I'm a new scrum master and am nearing the end of the first epic I have worked on.  My product team wants to know how we did on estimating the epic.  So basically we had an estimate of story points when we started and they want to know what that number is vs how many story points we actually ended up completing.  What's the best mechanism for doing so?

[Trudy Claspill]

Hello @Lindsey Arwine 

Welcome to the Atlassian community.

How are you recording the estimated story points for the Epic? Are you setting that directly in the Epic? Are you calculating the value based on summing up the story points in child issues?

How would you determine the number of story points completed? Would that be the story points for all the child issues that got marked as Done?

What is your process around the original estimation of story points and recording that information, the changing of story points as work progresses, and the addition/removal of child issues for the epic (if the child issues are a factor in determining either original or completed story points)?

[Lindsey Arwine]

Really great questions thank you, I might even figure out my question by answering this.

1. That would be the latter, the estimate for the epic was summed story points that were recorded in the child issues.

2. Yes all story points for child issues that are marked as done.

3. We actually have three fields.  We have Story Point Estimates, Story Points,  and Actual Story Points.  Story point estimate contains the original estimate at the start of the epic, there is an automation that maps it to Story Points so when you start the story both story points and story point estimates have the same value.  If a story rolls over and we need to re-estimate the level of effort, we will update the story points with new value.  Actual Story Points are filled out when the story is marked done so we can keep track of how long did it really take us.

Thinking through this, it sounds like I can take the sum of Story Point Estimates on all child issues and then take the sum of Actual Story Points and compare the two.

[Trudy Claspill]

I think you've got it!

Let us know if you have additional questions.