What Are Story Points? by Mike Cohn Story points are a unit of measure for expressing an estimate of the overall effort that will be required to fully implement a product backlog item or any other piece of work. When we estimate with story points, we assign a point value to each item. The raw values we assign are unimportant. What matters are the relative values . A story that is assigned a 2 should be twice as much as a story that is assigned a 1. It should also be two-thirds of a story that is estimated as 3 story points. Instead of assigning 1, 2 and 3, that team could instead have assigned 100, 200 and 300. Or 1 million, 2 million and 3 million. It is the ratios that matter, not the actual numbers. What Goes Into a Story Point? Because story points represent the effort to develop a story, a team’s estimate must include everything that can affect the effort. That could include: The amount of work to do The complexity of the work Any risk or uncertainty in doing the work When esti