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No story points before starting a Sprint

Last post 07:45 am June 4, 2020 by Ivan Traveso
5 replies
05:41 pm June 2, 2020

Hi All,

Is it good practice for not having story points right before starting a sprint?  The unestimated user story has tasks and each one of them has a point and this user story could expand in future sprints.  Thank you in advance for your input.


03:13 am June 3, 2020

Is it good practice for not having story points right before starting a sprint?  The unestimated user story has tasks and each one of them has a point and this user story could expand in future sprints.  Thank you in advance for your input.

The best way I can think of answering your question is by challenging you to think how any of the above would impact the Development Team's ability in creating a "Done" Increment by the end of the Sprint.


05:36 am June 3, 2020

Is it good practice for not having story points right before starting a sprint? 

From your reading of the Scrum Guide, would you say that the associated work is "ready" for Sprint Planning? Has the purpose of refinement been satisfied?


04:49 pm June 3, 2020

Since you are already stating that the story could expand in future sprints, it seems to me that this story is not ready to be included in a sprint.  This is just my opinion but planning for a story to span multiple sprints usually impacts the team's ability to produce a potentially releasable increment for each sprint.  This seems like an opportunity for additional refinement of the story into smaller increments of work. 


12:03 am June 4, 2020

Personally, I don't worry about story points and t-shirt sizes because they are arbitrary. I ask Development Team members to tell me how much work they can fit into one Sprint. They select from the most refined product backlog items and that is the work they will do.


07:45 am June 4, 2020

Regardless of the technique you use to assess how much work is enough for a sprint, the scrum guide says:

Product Backlog items that can be “Done” by the Development Team within one Sprint are deemed “Ready” for selection in a Sprint Planning. Product Backlog items usually acquire this degree of transparency through the above described refining activities

about the product backlog items it also states:

Product Backlog items have the attributes of a description, order, estimate, and value

With this in mind, I'd recommend the scrum team to inspect how the refinement process is working since you are getting to sprint planning with backlog items that are not small enough to be completed within a sprint.


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