Backlog containing mostly bugs

> We were advised to not provide story points for these bugs as the story points are reserved for new features

Who advised you of this? In Scrum the Development Team is responsible for the estimation of its own work. If these bugs represent work that the team is expected to do, then they must be in a position to estimate it, and no-one has the authority to forbid the team from doing so.

> Currently, for a bug we are estimating only the number of hours that are required to fix it.

For bugs that are raised in-sprint a defect can be raised as a task against the story. It's reasonable to estimate tasks in hours.

For bugs that are raised out-of-sprint (i.e. against work that has already been accepted as Done), the defects should be triaged into the Product Backlog and ordered, assuming they do not represent P-Level incidents that require immediate attention. They shoud be estimated the same way as other PBI's (e.g. by story points).

Thanks Ian! Very clear answer.

Hi Mircea,

As a Scrum Coach, I get asked these questions all the time.

Note that in the post below, if it ends up on the PBL then you would assign whatever units you use to estimate PBI"s, but if on SBL, then whatever units you estimate for items on the Sprint Backlog.

http://ScrumCrazy.com/bugs

Note that the above approach is just one approach. Scrum simply dictates that PBI's and items on the Sprint Backlogs have some way of being estimated. It is up to the Scrum Team to decide how that is done.

# Task Items can be sized in Ideal Hours.
# Backlog Items or User Stories can be sized in (Story) Points.

Based on how The Development Team is looking at a particular bug, it could end up being an Item or a Task. This selection will govern the unit of size.

Task Items = Task in above post!

Hi Mircea,

Scrum doesn't differentiate between Bugs and User Story, both are considered as Product Backlog Items. With that rules applied that means I can also assign points to Bugs?