{"id":6114,"date":"2021-07-17T18:26:38","date_gmt":"2021-07-17T10:26:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.projectpractical.com\/?p=6114"},"modified":"2023-11-03T14:37:17","modified_gmt":"2023-11-03T06:37:17","slug":"story-points-vs-hours-which-one-is-better-and-why","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.projectpractical.com\/story-points-vs-hours-which-one-is-better-and-why\/","title":{"rendered":"Story Points vs Hours: Which One Is Better and Why?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

There are several estimation techniques when it comes to project management and agile development. These normally depend on the metric being estimated, which can either be time, money, or even the effort required in the project at hand. In this particular article, we will focus on two common metrics-story hours and hours.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We will delve deeper into what these are before giving you a detailed comparison. Part of the article will also propose the best out of the two, complete with supporting reasons. We hope that you will have picked your preferred one by the end of our article. Let\u2019s get started.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Story Points<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

A story point is a metric used in agile to establish the difficulty of implementing a specific user story. This is an abstract measure of the effort that a team requires to implement the user story. It, therefore, informs the team members on the difficulty level of a given story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Several things bring about these difficulties. However, the most common ons are the complexities, risks, and efforts involved. This brings us to story point estimation, a relative estimation technique conducted at the product backlog grooming sessions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During story point estimation, the team responsible for development and testing evaluates the product backlog. They estimate the product backlog grooming before sprint planning<\/a> occurs to ensure that the process is highly efficient.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During this estimation, the agile team considers if the sprint plan can be conducted efficiently, whether the user story has been split reasonably and if there is adequate information for efficient completion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, note that these teams usually use the Fibonacci sequence when estimating story points and not the usual assessment methods.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Performing Agile Estimation Using Story Points<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Each team involved in the process must find the baseline story. Keep in mind that this does not have to be the smallest figure but the most reasonable one. Afterward, all the user stories should be sized by comparing them with the baseline.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The process that follows is pretty simple. All you have to is to find out whether a story will take longer than a given reference story or if it will be lesser than another reference story. If you have enough reference stories, you will have an easy time finding a similar-sized story to award points based on a given factor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Remember, during story point estimations, a point value is often given to every story. Relative values normally play an essential point over the raw values. This means that a story with two story points is normally twice as much as that with only one point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, when the single-story point exceeds 21. The user story must be split again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Advantages of Using <\/strong>Story Points<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n