Does estimation in story points work if you have multiple development teams?

[Ben Redmayne]

A quick google search suggests i am not the first to ask this question, however i am looking for the most recent answer from this community.

I am new(ish) to JIRA and i am currently going through the motions of trialling JIRA with a view to introducing JIRA to the programme i work on. 

It is a large programme and we will have around 20 teams (each with their own JIRA project).

I am looking into how we estimate tasks and i am trying to determine the best method.

I have never used story points before but have done a reasonable amount of research into their use and i like the idea.

To re-iterate my initial question... is it possible to use story points if you have multiple teams? 

I have read a little into this and it seems the different teams would need to use a common refernce when estimating, otherwise the same story point value may have two differnent meanings in two differnet projects? The logical answer to this would be to just say '1 story point should equate to roughly 1 day', but then you may aswell be just using hours and days??

Any advice or direction towards suitable advice would be appreciated.

Regards

[Troy Spetz]

If you need to compare estimates across teams, then use time estimation. All teams agree about how long is an 8 hour work day.

If you do not need to compare estimates across teams, then use Story Points. The actual low/medium/high complexity estimate is unique per team and therefore cannot be compared to another team using their own SP low-to-high estimate range.

[Jack Brickey]

@Ben Redmayne , first for sure story points work fine for multiple teams. Second do not try to relate SPs to time. SP are for ‘complexity’. Each team can have their own assessment of complexity. The key and trick is consistency within a team otherwise they don’t mean much. Team A’s “5 SP” may mean low complexity while for Team B it means medium complexity which is fine but Team A should not have 5 = medium in one instance and low in another. 

some teams may not desire to use SP at all and simply go with time estimation.

hope this helps.