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Project Management vocabulary · Agile & Scrum

Story points

Meaning in project management, with examples

/ˈstɔːri ˌpɔɪnts/nounCommon term

In project management, story points means: A unit agile teams use to estimate the relative size of work, combining effort, complexity and uncertainty instead of counting hours.

In Turkish: hikaye puanı, story point

How it is used

Teams often use a scale like 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, and estimate together, for example with planning poker. People say a story “is five points” or “we estimated it at eight”. Points are compared within one team only.

Example sentences

  1. The team gave the new login page 8 story points because of the security requirements.

  2. Story points aren't hours, so please don't convert them into days for the client.

Common collocations

  • estimate in story points
  • story point estimate
  • planning poker
  • assign story points
  • velocityThe amount of work an agile team usually completes in one sprint, often measured as the total story points of the finished items.
  • estimateAn informed guess of how long a task will take, how much effort it needs or how much it will cost, based on experience and the information available.
  • user storyA short, simple description of a feature from the point of view of the person who will use it, often written as: As a [user], I want [something] so that [benefit].
  • sprint planningThe meeting at the start of each sprint where the Scrum team agrees on a sprint goal, chooses the backlog items it will deliver and plans how to do the work.

This word in other fields

The same English word can have a different meaning in another field:

More terms: Agile & Scrum

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