Story point and story point estimate (duplicate?) fields

Alexander Brockhoff
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October 1, 2018

Hi all

On my Jira Cloud instance I have two fields, one called Story Points, one called Story points estimate.

The Story points estimate field is reserved in the custom field view so that I cannot delete it, while the Story Points field is not. I took this to assume one was custom created while the other was from Jira.

However, it seems Jira by default is using the Story Points field on the views for my issues and in the reporting for velocity etc. 

Is there something I am doing wrong? What is the proper use of each field? The estimate field doesn't make much sense to me as a field since the Story Points field seems to track changes to itself over time/in a sprint.

10 answers

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10 votes
Answer accepted
Petter Gonçalves
Atlassian Team
Atlassian Team members are employees working across the company in a wide variety of roles.
April 16, 2019

Hello @Guillaume Lederer,

I can clearly understand how this problem can be confusing and frustrating. Please, allow me to give you some guidance on this:

As I mentioned before, JIRA has one specific field to track each project type and a different field will not work:

- On Classic projects, the estimation is measured on the Story Points field

- On Next-gen projects, the estimation is measured on the Story Point Estimate field

That been said, I recently found out a bug that makes the field Story Points displays as Story Point Estimate in the New issue view although it's still displayed as Story Points when you go to Project settings > Screens, which causes even more confusion.

With this information in mind, please make sure you have added the correct field for your project screens, removing the other one to avoid more confusion.

If you are still struggling with this problem after the information above, please feel free to open a ticket with our internal support so we can have a closer look into this:

https://support.atlassian.com/contact/

Let us know if this information helps.

Guillaume Lederer
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April 16, 2019

Thank your very much @Petter Gonçalves for your fast and very accurate answer. I came to the exact same conclusion about such bug of label in the cloud version when trying to fix muy problem yesterday. I think I solved my situation for now by following the setting changes as explained in your posts, I am now on Classic projects with only "Stroy points" fields activated/visible anywhere I could in the settings. may my last frustration is that I can't (yet) see the sum of points in a sprint not yet started when I aml in the backlog view, but this is for another question, and much less problematic than not being able to work with estimates.

Thank you again !

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DALI DAVILA March 20, 2020

oh! what a great answer!! Tnxxxxx

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Ákos Botos December 12, 2020

Is this issue still stands that makes the field Story Points displays as Story Point Estimate in the New issue view although it's still displayed as Story Points when you go to Project settings > Screens, which causes even more confusion?

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antoine_viau
Contributor
August 17, 2021

Hello! What are Classic vs Next-gen... How do we know?
I started a whole new project in Jira Cloud and the scrum board for Sprints only shows Story points in the Scrum board tiles while you seem to mention that this feature is deprecated, while estimation seems there as well but not showing elsewhere than under the info pane.

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MWulff August 26, 2021

Any news on this bug? 

5 votes
Jamie Carey
Contributor
November 29, 2023

I've spent 30 minutes trying to find an answer in the documentation on which field is the system default to be used (especially in trying to understand how it rolls into using Advanced Roadmaps), and I'm shocked to find this community discussion. Is this really the answer? 

Somehow it's both (which doesn't make sense)? Which are we expected to use to make Advanced Roadmaps work properly? How would we know class versus next-gen? (that article link doesn't help)

Sven Müller June 3, 2024

Yes I agree, I am also shocked that there is no official guideline by Jira about this topic

1 vote
larry_lowe
Contributor
October 5, 2018

I was also concerned about this field, and reached out to Atlassian directly. Here's what i was told:

The field "Story Point Estimate" is a JIra default field. This field belongs to the project template "Next-Gen" (also known as Agility). The main difference between this field and the field "Story points" is that the "Story points" field (a field which belongs to the "classic" projects) allows you to edit its context, while "Story Point Estimate" is locked.

If you want to learn more about "Next-gen" projects, we recommend you to read the documentation linked below:

Kevin Dold
Contributor
December 13, 2018

My team isn't using the new Next-Gen template yet in every ticket we have we see two fields called "Story Points Estimate" one on top of the other and I'm unable to change that.
It's confusing to our developers.  Only the top field seems to really do anything. Is there anyway to remove this or is it a bug?

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Aditya Mehta January 18, 2019

Hi Kevin did you find a solution to this, we are facing the same issue, not using a next-gen project and still getting this field called "Story Point Estimate",

 

How can I remove this?

Kevin Dold
Contributor
January 18, 2019

 

 

 Hi Aditya, this is the response I received this week from Atlassian support. I still haven't been able to remove the duplicate field however.


"Hi Kevin, we hope you are having a wonderful day

Thank you for contacting Atlassian Support. My name is Heitor and I'll be assisting you on this ticket.

By your description, it seems your project has its "Story points" field and the "Story points estimate" field configured.

In this case, we would suggest you change the project's field configuration and remove the "Story points estimate" from this project. To do this, please follow the steps described below:

  1. Access your project and in the left menu, click on Project settings > Screens
  2. On the screen scheme configuration, click the gray pencil icon on the right side of the screen, next to the scheme name
  3. Under Screen, click on the screen name
  4. Hover the option Story points estimate and click on Remove. Keep the Story points option visible.

This should resolve your problem.

To give you more context, the field "Story Point Estimate" belongs to the project template "Next-Gen". The main difference between this field and the field "Story points" is that the "Story points" field (a field which belongs to the "classic" projects) allows you to edit its contents while "Story Point Estimate" is locked."

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Aditya Mehta January 21, 2019

Thanks Kevin. Cheers!

Pam Ault
Contributor
February 14, 2019

This doesn't work for me - the Story Point Estimate doesn't even show in the project's field configuration or screen configuration. People are pretty confused that there are two fields. This particular project is classic - we tried out Next-Gen for another project and abandoned it.

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Aravind Muchakhandi
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February 21, 2019

This not worked even for me!

Vijaya April 3, 2019

I have the same issue as Kevin mentioned. Two duplicate fields only in view/Edit screen ..other screen it displays correctly.

@Kevin Dold  did you find resolution for this? Please let me know, If yes.

Wouter van den Heever April 20, 2020

I have the same issue in Classic software project. I've removed the "Story Point Estimate" field at Project settings - Issues - Configure screen. But when I return to the Issues page in the project, the "Story Point Estimate" field is still there

0 votes
Dharmesh Barot
Contributor
March 18, 2021

For some reason I can't see "Story Points" on the agent view in Service Desk. Although "Story Points" field is added to the correct screen.

While searching for the "Story Points" field under Custom Fields I noticed the two fields, and this post helped clarify the confusion. However, the bug in Jira still exists.

0 votes
Rick Measham
Contributor
May 24, 2020

Even after all this it took me a while to find out that as I was creating "task" tickets, by default Story Points cannot be set. So even though I had the field configured to show up, it never did. The estimate field always shows up.

Once added to screens, it shows up for two other ticket types. But the estimate field always shows up.

This is a BRAND NEW Jira instance using a Classic project. There's still a bug that needs fixing: the wrong field is being added to screens in classic projects. This was crazy difficult to get to the bottom of. And this ticket is years old now.

Rick Measham
Contributor
May 24, 2020

Update: Field still doesn't show on the search results detailed issue view. "Where is my field" says it only shows when it has a value. I can confirm it shows when there's a value. However the field visibility is set to always show.

0 votes
Balaji CR April 3, 2020

The story point estimates is new gen project type and story point is in the classic view. only when you generate a velocity report, it be a confusion because team who updates the field do not use it consistently. while generating reports this will be indecisive. better to go to setting and remove story point estimates. 

0 votes
Kevin Dold
Contributor
May 10, 2019

@[deleted] You recent response to this thread contained this sentence:

Petterson Goncalves wrote: "That been said, I recently found out a bug that makes the field Story Points displays as Story Point Estimate in the New issue view"

Can you please just fix this bug? This thread has been going since Oct 2018. Why is it taking so long to address this issue? None of the answers given have solved the issue.  

Larry
Contributor
May 20, 2019

Inconceivable!

I had had enough with the classic nonsense complexity and everything tied to everything else situations and thought I'd make my life a bit easier with this Nextgen thing.

This makes core functionality number 3 found today that does not work. Come on atlassians. Story points and the counting of story points is at the core of agile metrics. Storing, changing, adding up and graphing integer numbers over time can't be that new and innovative of a technique to get right in 2019.

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0 votes
Deleted user May 10, 2019

Atlassian...when you add the field "Story Points" to your screens, in the quick edit view of the issue it is titled "Story Point Estimate" - thus when you have another specific field called "Story Point Estimate" and it also displays as "Story Point Estimate", this creates significant confusion. Please use some of the surplus billions to sort-it-out, thanks

0 votes
Guillaume Lederer
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April 15, 2019

This problem is a nightmare.

I tried the options described as answers from the atlassian team in this thread, but I Can't get my classic project (containing tickets migrated from a nextgen format I don't want) but I can't get to have points to be defined to task (of any type) and displayed properly in the backlog (+sum) too.

One questio : when we do change the settings, is it an imlemdiate effect? Why do I have issues where the "story points estimate" field appear, and some where it doesnt? how could it be?? 

Petter Gonçalves
Atlassian Team
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April 16, 2019

Hello Guillaume,

Please, check if the answer I posted below in the thread helps you.

0 votes
Petter Gonçalves
Atlassian Team
Atlassian Team members are employees working across the company in a wide variety of roles.
October 2, 2018

Hello Alexander,

You are completely right. The estimation of JIRA issues is based on the Story Points field or in the time tracking fields (Original Time Estimate, Remaining Estimate, Time Spent).

I'm not 100% sure on how the field Story Points Estimate was created (I'm still confirming this information with our devs), but I believe that it's related to the new Agility template for JIRA Cloud.

That being said, please keep using the Story Point field to estimate your issues and we will let you know as soon as our development team provides us with any information about the field Story Points Estimate.

Alexander Brockhoff
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October 3, 2018

Thanks for the response- let me know.

It seemed like this change also removed the Story Points field from our screens. It used to show up in my iOS app as editable but since the update I had to add it back to screens for it to show in the iOS app. 

Deleted user March 27, 2019

any update on this? 

Petter Gonçalves
Atlassian Team
Atlassian Team members are employees working across the company in a wide variety of roles.
March 28, 2019

Hello Denis,

Thank you for your follow-up.

After some time searching and verifying the Story Points Estimate field, I was able to get a clear piece of information about the use of both fields:

Today, your project templates are split into two types on JIRA Cloud: Classic and Next-gen projects.

Both project types use their own issue types and have different time tracking methods, which uses two different fields:

- On Classic projects, the estimation is measured on the Story Points field

- On Next-gen projects, the estimation is measured on the Story Point Estimate field

That been said, the time tracking measure will only work for your reports if you use the correct field to do it, depending on your project type.

That's why we should avoid adding the Story Point Estimate field to Classic project or the Story Points on Classic projects.

Let me know if this information helps.

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Deleted user March 28, 2019

Thanks Petterson, that really helps. 

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