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My team uses story points as an input into a time range function.

Fire-Dragon-DoL 6y ago
How does it split the time from the risk? My main problem with points is the impossibility to represent: - A long task of 5 days that's very well known, it's 5 days of work - A short task that's very uncertain. It could be a one line change or many days of work With time range, you can represent that and it's very visible. With points, you can represent that as the same points, but that does not reflect reality, one of the two estimates is potentially wrong. This also helps providing input on what research tasks should be performed and what's their value.
- steelframe 6y ago
  My team uses story points to estimate large projects over long periods of time. Sometimes things are overestimated, and other times things are underestimated. However, when you sum them all together, the errors tend to cancel each other out. I've found that upper management doesn't care whether any given task actually takes 3 days when we estimate it at 3 days. They just want to see a schedule where each task is estimated to take X days. It communicates that you've really thought through the plan. Then, in terms of results, what they really care about is that we track to the date we committed to for the overall effort. If a senior director is drilling down into a schedule and asking, "Why is this 5-day task taking Bob 7 days to finish?" that's a strong signal that it's time to change your management.
  - Fire-Dragon-DoL 6y ago
    I didn't say anything about drilling, just that you can have a minimum and maximum range. This can also give you a minimum and a maximum for when the project is done. This is actually very useful in large projects, because it lets you identify upfront what are the greatest factor of risks of a project. It didn't want to be a discussion of how management is done, just to highlight that having a time range seems to provide more information to management, which is usually what's desired.

How does it split the time from the risk? My main problem with points is the impossibility to represent: - A long task of 5 days that's very well known, it's 5 days of work - A short task that's very uncertain. It could be a one line change or many days of work With time range, you can represent that and it's very visible. With points, you can represent that as the same points, but that does not reflect reality, one of the two estimates is potentially wrong. This also helps providing input on what research tasks should be performed and what's their value.

steelframe 6y ago
My team uses story points to estimate large projects over long periods of time. Sometimes things are overestimated, and other times things are underestimated. However, when you sum them all together, the errors tend to cancel each other out. I've found that upper management doesn't care whether any given task actually takes 3 days when we estimate it at 3 days. They just want to see a schedule where each task is estimated to take X days. It communicates that you've really thought through the plan. Then, in terms of results, what they really care about is that we track to the date we committed to for the overall effort. If a senior director is drilling down into a schedule and asking, "Why is this 5-day task taking Bob 7 days to finish?" that's a strong signal that it's time to change your management.
- Fire-Dragon-DoL 6y ago
  I didn't say anything about drilling, just that you can have a minimum and maximum range. This can also give you a minimum and a maximum for when the project is done. This is actually very useful in large projects, because it lets you identify upfront what are the greatest factor of risks of a project. It didn't want to be a discussion of how management is done, just to highlight that having a time range seems to provide more information to management, which is usually what's desired.