The effective management of project timelines and progress is crucial in software development. Jira Software’s story points feature is a useful tool for estimating task effort. This blog post provides a guide on effectively utilizing Jira Story Points.
Understanding Story Points
Story points are a unit of measure for expressing the overall effort that is required to implement a user story. In simple terms, they reflect the complexity of a task, considering factors such as development work, testing and documentation, and any uncertainties in the task.
Configuring Story Points in Jira
First, you should ensure that your board is configured to use story points. This is done by going to Board Settings -> Estimation. From the ‘Estimation Statistic’ dropdown menu, select Story Points.
Add Story Points to a ticket
Assigning story points to a ticket is quite straightforward. Open the desired ticket, and look for the Story Points field. Enter the numerical value representing the effort estimation and save changes.
Using Story Points for Sprint Planning
Story points come into their own during the sprint planning process. You can use the total number of story points completed in previous sprints to guide the amount of work you accept in the next sprint. This practice is known as velocity tracking.
Estimate Completion Time Using Story Points
Based on your team’s velocity, you can estimate the time it will take to complete the remaining work. Divide the total remaining story points by the average velocity to arrive at the number of sprints required to complete the work.
Example:
If your team’s average velocity is 20 story points per sprint and you have 100 story points left to do, you will need:
Remaining Story Points / Velocity = Number of Sprints
100 / 20 = 5 sprints
Conclusion
Story points are a versatile tool in Jira software, allowing you to estimate effort more accurately and plan your work effectively. It provides an abstract measure of effort required, making it a key component in agile software development.
