3 ms·

I'm almost afraid to ask but what unit of time does that "8 or 13" correspond to?

by kqr 4y ago

irjustin 4y ago
nah it's all good. it's just the "estimation value" which is technically arbitrary, but a common practice is in a 2-week sprint, 1x eng 1x sprint is ~5 points. By saying 8pts the team is effectively saying it's probably a 2 sprint job and individual tickets are not supposed to be 2 sprints long meaning there's complexity that either needs to be broken apart or on the rarer case, team agrees the ticket is fine as-is then it'll take 2 sprints. Anything 13 or greater is saying this ticket is so big we can't even begin to accurately estimate it - PM take it away from us! It's fun to see 21 or 34 pts... it's all a joke at that point.
- mongol 4y ago
  Is that common? I thought it varied depending on the team, but usually that 1 pt is the shortest meaningful piece of work. Where I work now, 5 pt is not especially much. We have total story points delivered in a sprint around 120.
  - irjustin 4y ago
    As mentioned, it's technically arbitrary, so you just need to get used to how your org does it. There's no right or wrong as long as your org agrees on the value of those points... sort of like bitcoin, ha ha (cries in BTC).
  - hgsgm 4y ago
    You didn't say how long a sprint is nor how large your team is, which makes me suspect that you don't handle measurements well in general.
- kqr 4y ago
  Thanks. My teams have always estimated in hours (though at times these hours were called points) so I was a bit frightened to hear that an estimation of 13 hours would be considered bad! I guess if 13 means 26 person-days I get why people would be nervous – even I would suggest breaking it down into smaller pieces, if possible!
  - Scarblac 4y ago
    The main point of points is that they are not supposed to be equivalent to x amount of time. They're supposed to represent a measure of complexity. How much time that then takes depends on who does the work, the order in which tickets are implemented, how much distraction there is, luck (do you encounter any unforeseen problems), and so on. They're then used to see how many issues will fit in a sprint, which is a measure of time. So everybody ends up treating them as representing time anyway...
    - re-thc 4y ago
      That’s the theory but it doesn’t help managers so they still convert it back to time somehow.
      - hgsgm 4y ago
        Scrum was never for managers. If a manager is involved in predictions, it's not scrum. Scrum is about delivering the best you can each month, with client/management setting priorities and then appreciating what they get, instead of trying to steer the car from the boot.
        re-thc 4y ago
        Sure, I get what scrum is. "Scrum" in the real world isn't that though - at least 80% of the common case (check the other comments).
Double_a_92 4y ago
Theoretically it's arbitrary numbers. Then a factor specifically calculated for your team gets applied to it to turn it into hours or days. But in reality it's ideal hours or ideal days. The 8 and 13 come from the fibonacci sequence.

I'm almost afraid to ask but what unit of time does that "8 or 13" correspond to?

by kqr 4y ago

I'm almost afraid to ask but what unit of time does that "8 or 13" correspond to?

nah it's all good. it's just the "estimation value" which is technically arbitrary, but a common practice is in a 2-week sprint, 1x eng 1x sprint is ~5 points. By saying 8pts the team is effectively saying it's probably a 2 sprint job and individual tickets are not supposed to be 2 sprints long meaning there's complexity that either needs to be broken apart or on the rarer case, team agrees the ticket is fine as-is then it'll take 2 sprints. Anything 13 or greater is saying this ticket is so big we can't even begin to accurately estimate it - PM take it away from us! It's fun to see 21 or 34 pts... it's all a joke at that point.

mongol 4y ago
Is that common? I thought it varied depending on the team, but usually that 1 pt is the shortest meaningful piece of work. Where I work now, 5 pt is not especially much. We have total story points delivered in a sprint around 120.
- irjustin 4y ago
  As mentioned, it's technically arbitrary, so you just need to get used to how your org does it. There's no right or wrong as long as your org agrees on the value of those points... sort of like bitcoin, ha ha (cries in BTC).
- hgsgm 4y ago
  You didn't say how long a sprint is nor how large your team is, which makes me suspect that you don't handle measurements well in general.
kqr 4y ago
Thanks. My teams have always estimated in hours (though at times these hours were called points) so I was a bit frightened to hear that an estimation of 13 hours would be considered bad! I guess if 13 means 26 person-days I get why people would be nervous – even I would suggest breaking it down into smaller pieces, if possible!
- Scarblac 4y ago
  The main point of points is that they are not supposed to be equivalent to x amount of time. They're supposed to represent a measure of complexity. How much time that then takes depends on who does the work, the order in which tickets are implemented, how much distraction there is, luck (do you encounter any unforeseen problems), and so on. They're then used to see how many issues will fit in a sprint, which is a measure of time. So everybody ends up treating them as representing time anyway...
  - re-thc 4y ago
    That’s the theory but it doesn’t help managers so they still convert it back to time somehow.
    - hgsgm 4y ago
      Scrum was never for managers. If a manager is involved in predictions, it's not scrum. Scrum is about delivering the best you can each month, with client/management setting priorities and then appreciating what they get, instead of trying to steer the car from the boot.
      - re-thc 4y ago
        Sure, I get what scrum is. "Scrum" in the real world isn't that though - at least 80% of the common case (check the other comments).

Double_a_92 4y ago

Theoretically it's arbitrary numbers. Then a factor specifically calculated for your team gets applied to it to turn it into hours or days. But in reality it's ideal hours or ideal days. The 8 and 13 come from the fibonacci sequence.