As per a popular maxim, if you travel across India there is visible culture, food, clothing & language change every 100 kms. Likewise, when we observe teams practicing story points estimation & using velocity for prediction, we find inconsistency of usage in every alternate team. In this webinar we will attempt to clear the fuss around these two topics and understand the fundamentals of points estimation, velocity and other related factors.

2. 2
Velocity, Story
Points & other
MESS!

3. © Benzne. All rights reserved
AGILE
DEVOPS
AI
DESIGN
THINKING
CULTURE
LEAN
KANBAN
VISUALIZATION
ITSM
CI/CD
SCRUM
SAFE
XP
CLOUD
ANALYTICS
MINDSET
PEOPLE
PROCESS
TECHNOLOGY
DATA

4. 4
Anuj M Ojha
12+ years Agile experience
8+ Orgwide Agile
Transformation Journeys
11,000+ People Trained
~125 teams coached across
multiple Geographies
Special area of interest has
been bringing in business
agility, appropriate
mindset & enriching
Culture.

5. © Benzne. All rights reserved
So how does the Agile makeup begins?
Stage A
Let’s ‘Agile’
Scrum is the most
common choice for
teams who wants to be
agile. Somebody who has
worked on it start setting
the team norms.
Stage B
Set Norms
Find PO, SM & Dev Team.
Break time in 2 week
sprints. Have 5 meetings.
And use JIRA tool.
Stage C
Work became
‘Backlog’
Call only ‘story’ as
important. Even when
you don’t get, write
everything in a format
<As a.. I want … so that ..>
Stage D
And estimate
became ‘story
points’
Redefining the estimates
as story points, reporting
based on velocity and
growing velocity became
the ‘soul purpose’

6. Relative Sizing
6
© Benzne. All Rights Reserved.

7. Estimation
7
© Benzne. All Rights Reserved.
As much you could know MoSCoW
Work Item 1 Must
WI 2 Must
WI 3 Must
WI 4 Must
WI 5 Must
WI 6 Must
WI 7 Must
WI 8 Must
WI 9 Must
WI 10 Should
WI 11 Should
WI 12 Should
WI 13 Should
WI 14 Should
WI 15 Should
WI 16 Could
WI 17 Could
WI 18 Could
WI 19 Could
WI 20 Could
20 work items 9M+6S+5C
Points (P) = Complexity * Uncertainty * Effort
Columns are STORY POINTS Bucket List Technique
Base Work Item = Simple * Certain * Small
0 0.5 1 2 3 5 8 13 20 40 100 ?
WI 7
Scenarios Stories A B C D E Estimate Observation Happens
Sc 1 WI 12 3 3 3 3 3 3 P BINGO 1%
Sc 2 WI 15 3 5 3 5 3 5 P Min & max are neighbours 30%
Sc 3 WI 5
13 8 5 8 13
13 P
Min & max are not
neighbours
45%
8 8 8 8 13
Sc4 WI 19
3 5 8 3 3
8 P
3 13 8 5 3

8. What does business demands?
8
© Benzne. All Rights Reserved.
Velocity is the sum of points
of completed work items in
the sprint.
Ex: You wanted to finish 10
work items of 1 story points
each. By the end of the sprint
you managed to mark 8
items DONE then the velocity
will be be 8 points
Average velocity, as the name
suggests is the average of
velocity values of past few
sprints.

9. 9
The excerpts are taken
from Ron Jeffries blog
“Story Points Revisited”
published on May 23, 2019

10. 10
Story points is a concept of XP
meant for User stories while most
of scrum teams use it without
understanding its concept
Saying bad about hourly or ideal
days estimation
Converting story points to
Ideal days
Identifying the size of the
backlog purely on story
points without factoring
technical difficulties
Finding story point for
individual stages of quality and
hence not abiding to DOD
How
Story points
became a
MESS?
The blunder..

11. 11
Velocity became the measure of
efficiency or team performance
It is the summation of ‘story points’
of all the stories and do not contain
efforts against other work-items
Velocity could still be
achieved by ignoring quality,
quantity & priority
Value delivered is always
confused with velocity
Team can inflate velocity by
increasing the estimates
How
Velocity
became a
MESS?
More blunder..

12. A. Single Acceptance Test method
(by Neil K of ‘No Estimates movement’)
Slice the end to end story till the level of one
day. Trick is to consider individual
acceptance test of each story/feature.
12
Ambitious but logical
B. Running Tested Features (RTF) aka Burn-
up chart (by Ron J)
Focus on delivering the running tested
features from day one of the project and
deliver it consistency throughout the project.
C. Use any way till it allows you to have
deeper understand (by me :-) )
It is all about slicing the bigger requirements
into smaller and eliminating the fat from it
and just finding the ‘essentials’. Clarity is the
key to deliver value. Use best of options A, B &
C and automatically agility will prevail.

13. ‘Questions’
Write to us consult@benzne.com
13

14. Agile for Remote - https://benzne.com/benzne-remote-
consulting/
Blog - https://benzne.com/introduction-to-spotify-model/
Agile Game - https://benzne.com/game/
Youtube - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KO8LuYy4THA
Follow us -https://www.linkedin.com/company/benzne/
14
New at Benzne

15. © Benzne. All rights reserved
Thank You!