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Can User stories be zero pointed?

Last post 08:40 pm October 23, 2019 by Peter Dawson
4 replies
VBMVVN TRIVARGA DHATHRI PALLA
02:53 pm October 23, 2019

Scenario- " Team A=8 members, and one more team member from SRE contributing user stories to Team A. Should the SRE user stories be estimated or zero pointed? Zero pointed now because Team A feels that member might not take their work and any issue that member contribution is low and SRE user stories are primary focus for the SRE team member. In case SRE Team member does'nt complete user stories in sprint then the the Team A's burndown metric might get impacted.

So is it ok to have SRE user stories be zero pointed?

Steve Matthew
03:11 pm October 23, 2019

Can they be zero pointed? - Yes, they can be. But can you think of the reason why you point stories in the first place?

From the scenario you describe, it doesn't appear the true purpose is served and it also appears that there is a disconnect in being a team. It appears that one team is only concerned about their burn-down and doesn't treat the other as part of the team. So that begs the question why even enter such a setup?

Ian Mitchell
04:16 pm October 23, 2019

So is it ok to have SRE user stories be zero pointed?

Would that solve a problem, or hide it from view?

Timothy Baffa
08:24 pm October 23, 2019

Why is the Development Team being encouraged to silo work individually within the team?   

How does such a practice promote team-based ownership and responsibility for the entire sprint forecast?   

Peter Dawson
08:40 pm October 23, 2019

A story point is a  a relative unit of measure, decided upon and used by individual Scrum teams, to provide estimates of effort for completing a requirement. 

So if a User story is zero, then is there zero effort  to complete that requirement ??

From what I am reading and understanding, its more about dividing the works items. Overall the dev team is responsible for the entire sprint goal. 

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