Steps to Decide Stories and Story Points

Deciding how many stories and story points to allocate to a 2-week sprint involves understanding the team’s capacity, the complexity of the tasks, and the team’s past performance. Here's how you can approach this in an easy-to-understand way:

Steps to Decide Stories and Story Points

1. Understand Team Capacity:

   • Team Members and Availability: Know how many team members are available and how many hours they can work. For example, if you have 3 developers working 6 hours per day, over 10 working days, the total available time is:
   $$3 \text{ developers} \times 6 \text{ hours/day} \times 10 \text{ days} = 180 \text{ hours}$$

2. Estimate Story Points:

   • Story Points: These represent the effort and complexity of a task, not just time. They help compare how hard or easy different tasks are. For example:
     • Small task = 1 point
     • Medium task = 3 points
     • Large task = 5 points
   • Historical Velocity: If your team usually completes 25 story points in a 2-week sprint, that’s a good starting point for planning.

3. Break Down the Work:

   • Identify all the stories (tasks) to be done in the sprint.
   • Assign story points based on the estimated effort for each story.

4. Plan for Developer and QA Workload:

   • Ensure the number of stories matches the capacity of both developers and QA. For example, if the team has 180 developer hours, and each story takes about 30 hours, they can handle:
   $$\frac{180 \text{ hours}}{30 \text{ hours per story}} = 6 \text{ stories}$$

5. Adjust for Uncertainty:

   • Always leave a little room for unexpected tasks or challenges by not filling the sprint completely.

Example

Imagine your team typically handles 25 story points. In a new sprint, you have 3 developers and 1 QA, each working 6 hours/day for 2 weeks.

1. Team Capacity:

   • Developer capacity: 180 hours total.
   • QA capacity: 60 hours total.

2. Estimate Stories:

   • You have 6 stories, each estimated at 5 points (medium size, 30 hours per story).

3. Plan the Sprint:

   • Developers can handle 6 stories (30 hours each).
   • QA can also handle testing for 6 stories (10 hours each).

Thus, you can allocate 6 stories, totaling 30 story points for the sprint.

Key Points:

• Use past data (velocity) to guide how many story points the team can handle.
• Match the workload with the team's capacity.
• Leave room for unforeseen tasks.

This approach ensures you don’t overload the team and can deliver the sprint’s goals effectively.