### [What Are Story Points in Agile and How Do You Calculate Them?](https://taskup.com.br/en/what-are-story-points-agile-how-to-calculate/)

**Published:** julho 14, 2023
**Author:** Eduardo Salerno

**Excerpt:** Understand story points, relative estimation, and how Agile teams use them to plan work and capacity.

**Content:**

Want to know what Agile story points are?

Story points may sound like a reward you get for playing a fantasy video game.

But they’re not!

Story points are an agile estimation technique that provides a relative estimate of how much work and effort will be required for a specific task.

But the problem is that although the Agile guide tells us to make these estimates, it doesn’t specify exactly how to make an estimate. calculated in Agile. As a bonus, we’ll tell you a secret to help you implement story points effectively in your Agile development projects!

But don’t worry.

In this article, we will demystify story points and also talk about how story points are calculated in Agile. As a bonus, we’ll tell you a secret to help you implement story points effectively in your Agile development projects!

What are story points in Agile?

Before we talk about what a story point is, we need to understand two terms: ‘user story’ and ‘product backlog’.

A user story is an informal explanation of the features your user wants in the system.

An example of a real-world user story is: “As a gamer, I want my hero to be able to fly.”

But wait, where does the user story fit into the Agile development process?

It fits into the product backlog.

A product backlog contains a list of all the user stories that need to be worked on and implemented in the final product.

Think of it this way:

User stories are items in your inventory. video game, like magic swords, armor and other cool things. The product backlog is the inventory that contains the items!

So now, let’s get back to story points.

A story point is a unit assigned to a user story to express how much time and energy would be required for that work.

It’s like the difficulty level of a game.

A higher number means a harder level.

However, this is where most people go wrong.

In a video game, level 2 doesn’t necessarily mean it’s twice as hard as level 1. But that’s not the case with story points.

Let’s explain:

Story points are a relative estimation technique (also called relative sizing).

Relative estimation means that values are assigned on a basis of comparison. This means there are no standard units for story points.

For example, if user story A has a point of 2 and user story B has a point of 1, this will mean that A will take twice the effort compared to completing B.

However, video games and story points have one similarity: landmarks.

For example, let’s say two teams are building two similar mobile puzzle games.

Level 10 in the first puzzle game wouldn’t necessarily be as difficult as level 10 in the second puzzle game, right?

Similarly, your team could assign a story point value of 8 to a user story and another team might make a 13 point estimate for a similar story. The value of your story points depends entirely on your team and your task.

Why use story points in Agile?
We know what you’re thinking.

Do we really need to use Agile estimation methods like story points?

Can’t we just use time estimates?

Well, you can, but story points are a much more accurate estimate.

Story points allow you to calculate team velocity and estimate work objectively.

1\. Team velocity can be calculated
Your team velocity is an important metric that you simply cannot ignore.

Why?

By calculating your team velocity, you can view:

your team’s efficiency Agile
speed at which your Agile team is progressing
This way you can make better predictions for your future project timeline.

But what is speed?

Velocity (also called sprint velocity) shows how much work was done in each sprint. It’s the total story points completed divided by the total number of sprints.

For example, let’s say your team finishes 50 story points in 2 sprints.

Then your sprint velocity will be (50/2) = 25 points per sprint.

2\. Estimation without specific time commitments
Things don’t always go according to plan, even in an Agile project.

And when you’re using a time estimate, you’re just specifying an approximate time. You may spend more time on tasks you thought would be completed in an instant, and vice versa.

The bottom line is that it’s difficult to estimate the exact amount of time needed for a technical task.

Because story points are an agile estimation method, they don’t make any set commitments (like within a week or next Friday). Instead, they provide a relative estimate of the overall effort that will be put into a task.

This will help reduce the unnecessary stress of meeting tight, unrealistic deadlines. Instead, you are left with a much more reasonable and accurate estimate.

3\. Story Points Are Not Subjective
Sometimes people differ in their estimates of how long a task will take in an Agile project. This often leads to subjectivity when using time estimates.

This is why this approach does not always provide an accurate estimate.

For example, a senior developer may assign a ‘7 hour’ task as per his standard, but it may take the junior developer 15 hours to complete the same task.

Story points eliminate this problem.

When calculating an Agile story point, the entire team sits down and decides which points to assign to the user story.

Bonus: Check out our guide on agile release planning!

3 key factors that affect story points in Agile
So we talk about assigning the user story according to the ‘effort’ required to implement the backlog item.

But what exactly does effort mean?

Let’s take a look:

A. How much work needs to be done (story size)
Not all backlog items are equal; one product backlog item may require more work than another.

For example, suppose there are two different backlog items:

‘I want a new weapon for the main hero, Monkey King’
‘I want new weapons for all the heroes’
Which one do you think will take longer?

The second story, of course!

Compared to it, the first story won’t take much work.

So the second story will receive more points than the first due to the larger size of the story .

B. Risk and Uncertainty
Every project has its risks and uncertainties, particularly with certain types of backlog items.

For example, if your product backlog item involves working with a new structure that your team doesn’t have much experience with, this risk factor will increase the value of the story point.

C. Complexity
Complexity is definitely a very important factor for any Agile estimation technique.

Here are two similar stories with different acceptance criteria :

‘I want a new outfit for the character Geralt’
‘I want one new special attack for Geralt’
Notice the difference in its complexity?

The first is a piece of cake, just a few tweaks here and there, and you’re done!

The second requires you to code a new special attack and see how it works in the game.

Then you’ll have to test for bugs.

Of course, during the effort estimation process, these user stories clearly get more points.

Bonus: check out our guide on Tech Debt!

How Story Points are calculated in Agile
You can calculate Agile story points by creating a base story, choosing your scale and estimation technique, and calculating accordingly.

Story point estimation is usually done using a method called ‘planning poker’.

Sounds interesting, right?

Let’s now learn how to do a story point estimation:

1\. Create a Basic Story
Set up the poker table

The first step of the estimation technique is to create a reference story or baseline story.

It is a completed user story from a previous iteration cycle assigned a story point value (usually 1 to simplify).

This will be your normalized story point.

The product backlog is also presented with all new user stories.

2\. Choose a scale for estimation
Deal the cards

There are two scales used for estimating story points:

Linear scale: contains natural numbers such as 1, 2, 3 and so on
Fibonacci Scale: Fibonacci series numbers like 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, and so on.
For simplicity, most agile teams tend to choose the Fibonacci series for their story point estimation.

In this estimation technique, the Fibonacci scale is then entered into a table where you can assign any user story to a value.

See what an estimation table looks like when the team starts filling it out!

## Related content

- [Story Points in Agile: A Complete Estimation Guide for Teams](https://taskup.com.br/en/story-points-agile-complete-team-estimation-guide/)
- [The Most Common ClickUp Mistakes and How to Avoid Them](https://taskup.com.br/en/most-common-clickup-mistakes-and-how-to-avoid-them/)
- [ClickUp Brain²: What Changes When AI Starts Working for You](https://taskup.com.br/en/clickup-brain-2-what-changes-when-ai-starts-working-for-you/)

**Categorias:** English

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