When using GreenHopper, what is a good baseline for Story Points...1-10?

[Danny Riley]

Question asked during the August 30th, 2012 webinar titled "Improving Processes with Scrum and Kanban"

[Jay Barra · Accepted solution]

I tend to like Fibonnaci numbers

1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34 and 55 as the top. Anything over 55 probably is too large of a project that can be tackled in a sprint.

[Ryan C Meinzer]

We use the somewhat typical X-small, Small, Medium, Large, X-Large, ??? approach during the estimation game. Then I translate that to 2,4,8,16,32. 32 is too big for us to get into a sprint, we do 1 week sprints, so we break it down. 16 we usually break down as well. Anything over 32 is an epic and needs to be broken down.

[Nicholas Muldoon]

Hi Danny,

I'm with Jay on this one. Fibonnaci numbers work well for sorting out the relative effort of a story - you don't have an argument about whether it is a 5 or a 6, instead it's a question of "is it a 5 or an 8?".

One way to start is to select a user story that the team is fairly confident about how much effort is involved. Estimate this using fibonnaci and call it a 3 or a 5, for instance, then you can proceed with estimating other stories using that issue as an indication.

Thanks Danny,
Nicholas Muldoon
@GreenHopperTeam

[Justin Corcoran]

As Jay's answer probably points out, this question is very vague. What does a story point mean for your team? Are they hours, days, weeks, etc? And regardless, it really has nothing to do with GreenHopper.