It mirrors my experience as well. For about 6 months, management wanted us to time against user story. At the time, we used scale from 1 to 5. The concern was e

It mirrors my experience as well. For about 6 months, management wanted us to time against user story. At the time, we used scale from 1 to 5. The concern was estimates weren't linear and for planning, a 5 one point story did not equal 1 five point story. Then, we ran the numbers. This was our graph for median time for a swag: | * | * | * | * |* |--------- 1 2 3 4 5 The ah-ha for management was the standard deviation. The more points estimated, there was greater and certain variance. We went to fib, because it felt more natural with the effort. The end result is if a story is estimated on the end, everyone knows there isn't enough information, it's a black hole or it should be broken down.