User Story Basics – What is a User Story?

What is a User Story? I’m glad you asked! First of all, it’s important to say that User Stories are not a part of Scrum as defined in the required practices in the Scrum Guide. User Stories are but one way to represent Product Backlog Items in Scrum, and while it is the most popular [...]

What’s a good way to establish a Story Point Scale?

Here is what I generally coach: (I assume that you have the pseudo fibonacci numbers that come with standard story point cards:  1/2, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 20, 40, 100) 1.  Try to imagine the smallest actual story (something that provides user/stakeholder value — an actual tiny feature).  Sometimes that could be just [...]

In Scrum, Should I assign Story points to bugs?

First a definition. Bug – Any behavior of the system that either violates an acceptance test, or is unacceptable system behavior that cannot practically be covered by an acceptance test(for example, aesthetics issues, or legacy bugs).  Another way of saying this is any behavior that is inconsistent with previously well understood requirements and/or acceptance tests. [...]