What’s the point? Part 2 ...
Part 2 – Perception of points; views of stakeholders & the recommendation As discussed in part1 - " what's the point in a story point " post, product backlog is a collection of product requirements (stories, epics & themes) and delivers “value as a whole”. Scope of the product or size of the product backlog is a sum of the points of all user stories (of all sizes) in the backlog. Completion of backlog for a release is tracked by the key metric called “release burndown”. With time/days on the x-axis and total planned story points for the release on y-axis, the burndown shows the rate at which the team is burning these story points. It’s obvious that the faster the team burns down these story points, the sooner they’ll reach the goal (release goal). But should the focus be purely on burning points to reach the milestone? If the team’s focus is anything but delivering value by burning points and meeting the definition of done, the product/release i