Personal Metrics for Story Points in Scrum Development

Tadashi Shigeoka ·  Thu, January 2, 2020

I’ll introduce my personal metrics for converting story points (estimation points) to time in Scrum development.

Scrum | スクラム開発

Background Knowledge

Scrum Development

This article doesn’t cover “What is Scrum development?” It’s written assuming knowledge of Scrum development.

If you’re not familiar with Scrum development, please read the following:

Story Points

Please read the following articles about story points in Scrum development and the anti-pattern of converting story points to time:

Practicing the Pomodoro Technique

As a personal work technique, I’ve been practicing the Pomodoro Technique since around 2016.

So I convert about 1 Pomodoro (30 minutes) to the minimum unit of 1 story point.

Time Conversion Metrics for Story Points

Purpose of Converting Story Points to Time

I convert story points to time because I want to have my own metrics when aligning point understanding when joining a new Scrum team.

Therefore, the following story point time conversion table is only used personally and is not shared within the Scrum team.

When Using Fibonacci Numbers for Story Points

Estimated Points
(見積りポイント)
Time
00
10.5 ~ 1 hour
22 ~ 3 hours
31 day
52 days
83 days
131 week
212 weeks
?Unknown

I basically try to decompose tasks when they get 8 points or more.

When 13 points or more are assigned, it becomes a high-uncertainty estimate, so I add tasks for effort estimation to the Backlog and re-estimate story points after completing those tasks.

That’s all from the Gemba.