Do the total number of story points in a Sprint have to be consistent between sprints?

[Steve Enriquez]

If I begin a project by assigning Story Points, does each Sprint need to have close to the same number of points before beginning the Sprint?   

[Eric Yanou · Accepted solution]

A straight answer is NO.

You'd instead want to have a number of story points close to the number you were able to deliver the previous sprints on average, not what you initially committed to.

[Steve Enriquez]

How many Sprints, on average, should be completed before setting a points average for the subsequent Sprints?

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Jira goes with three.

Remember that Scrum expects the velocity to vary - ideally after 3 sprints, you know things like "we usually get about 60 done per sprint", so when you're defining your next sprint, you get up tp 60 into it.  (Some people will develop rules like "plan only 50, because we get interrupted with 10 points worth of support every sprint").

In the next sprint, you look at how you did over the last few sprints.  Is 60 still a good number?  Did the velocity go up or down?  If it went up, great, you're getting more done, if it went down, look at why and explain it.  If it's much the same, look at how you could improve and get more done.

[Steve Enriquez]

Very helpful - thank you.

[Fabian Lim]

Hi @Steve Enriquez

Welcome to the community!

Ideally you would like to close all stories that you committed, but if you can't finish them, you would put them back in the backlog or to an upcoming sprint.

Story points are helpful for capacity planning for future sprints. If in average you complete 15 story points per sprint, you would try to match that total to ensure you can meet your commitments.

Regards 

[Steve Enriquez]

So then a story worth 3 points that could not be completed would go back into the backlog, thereby displaying on the Burndown chart as a dip in the estimated vs actual task completion.  Am I on the right track?

[Fabian Lim]

I recommend you read this documentation to get an overview of agile development: https://www.atlassian.com/agile/about

Regards