What are Story Points and why are they needed?

Story Points are a unit for measuring the relative complexity of a task in Agile. They show how much effort the team will need, not exact time. Story Points estimate the amount of work, the risks, and the unknowns.

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#Why they are needed

• help plan sprints - the team knows how many points it can complete per iteration (velocity);
• give a realistic estimate, not tied to hours;
• allow tasks to be compared to each other: "this is twice as complex as that";
• reduce stress - the estimate is not "by time" but "by relative complexity".

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#How they are estimated

The team discusses the task and assigns it a number of points (usually on the Fibonacci scale: 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13...). The more Story Points, the greater the amount of work, risk, or uncertainty.

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#Example

• 2 SP - a minor fix;
• 5 SP - a new feature;
• 13 SP - a complex integration with an external API.

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Summary: Story Points are needed so the team can estimate and forecast workload, focusing on complexity rather than on hours.