Story Points are the most divisive element of Agile software development. Why?
Because they define a contract. They are the pinch-point that attempts to equate a timescale (often masquerading as ‘complexity’) to a deliverable.
Sitting for hours in a refinement session just to put an arbitrary number on a poorly worded user story is the opposite of job satisfaction.
Sure, you can try t-shirt sizing if you like. Same problem. Trust is not in a number or a value. Even Jira admits that “story points are often misused.” They go on to say: “Story points go wrong when they’re used to judge people, assign detailed timelines and resources, and when they’re mistaken for a measure of productivity”
Story Points make everybody miserable, the developers who have to make them up, the stakeholders who don’t understand how they work, the product owners who can’t use them to show anything meaningful.
Do everyone a favour and just ignore them, or spend as little time worrying about them as possible. Instead, get back to the task of building great software and improving customer satisfaction.
Want to know how? Feel free to get in touch to find out more.