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Story points and card decks
Story points measure how big a piece of work is compared with other work: effort, complexity and uncertainty together. They are relative, so a 5 only means something next to your team’s 3s and 8s.
Why the numbers have gaps
The bigger a task, the less precisely anyone can estimate it. The difference between a 1 and a 2 is clear; the difference between a 20 and a 21 is noise. Decks with growing gaps force you to pick a bucket instead of arguing over false precision.
The common decks
| Deck | Cards | Good for |
|---|---|---|
| Fibonacci | 0, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89 | The default for most Scrum teams. Gaps grow roughly 60% each step. |
| Modified Fibonacci | 0, ½, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 20, 40, 100 | Teams who want a “tiny” card and rounder numbers at the top. |
| T-shirt sizes | XS, S, M, L, XL, XXL | Early roadmap sizing, or teams new to estimation who find numbers loaded. |
| Powers of two | 0, 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32 | Teams that think in doublings (“twice as big as that one”). |
| Custom | Anything you like | Hours, ideal days, or a deck your team already knows. |
Most decks also carry a ? (“I can’t estimate this yet”) and a ☕ (“let’s take a break”).
How to choose
- Sprint planning with a velocity: Fibonacci or modified Fibonacci, since numbers add up.
- Roadmaps and epics: T-shirt sizes. Nobody pretends to know an epic to the point.
- Mixed audiences: T-shirt sizes keep the conversation about size, not time.
- Already have a habit? Keep it. Consistency matters more than the deck.
Keep points meaningful
- Anchor them. Pin one or two reference stories per value, so “an 8” means the same thing to everyone. PointHuddle lets you attach an example story to each card.
- Don’t convert to hours. Once points become hours, people estimate hours and the relative view is lost.
- Split the big ones. If a story keeps landing on 21 or more, it is usually several stories.
- Check them now and then. Comparing estimates with actuals shows whether your 8s really are bigger than your 5s.
Try it with your team
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