As a BI Practitioner

I want to understand the concepts behind Sprint Points

So that I know why we use it

Scrum uses a process called “Poker points” as a technique to allow the AgileBI team to estimate the amount of effort for each story that needs to be delivered.

= The Mechaniscs of Scrum Poker

[[cards]]

[[dont show till end]]

[[fibanancci series]]

[[Discuss outlines and why]]

[[chnage your mind, or not]]

[[write it down and move on]]

This process is design to achieve three major things:

1) Improved Estimation

It allows the team to estimate the level of effort required to deliver a story, without having to understand the story in infinite detail.

By using the concept of ratios to estimate the effort the team arrive at an estimate that is good enough to allow them to fil the sprint backlog.  It also allows them to identify the stories where they really do not have enough understanding to estimate the effort with any level of accuracy.

If a story is pointed at 40 and above, it typically mean it needs to be broken down into multiple smaller stories, or that more research really is required to understand the story better.

2) Leverage the wisdom of the crowd

It allows all the team to bring their experience to the table on how the story can be delivered.  

This approach stops the scenario where the most senior or vocal member of the team overrides everybody else in the room when estimations the effort.  It allows the other members to safely be involved in this process.  

It always amazes me when team members bring some experience to the table that you never know they had during this process.

3) Collaborate by default

As the team work through the point scoring process, they will invariably talk through what is required to deliver the story.  It’s almost like a mini run through of the build process. 

The benefit of this is the entire team are listening to this process.  So even if they believe they will not be involved in delivering that particular story, they are aware of what is involved to deliver it.  This enables them to potentially pick it up if required during the sprint.

It will also often result in the team providing a sounding board or quality assurance on the process that is described in the mini run through.