I have heard from many developers who are not happy with Scrum. They think that making story points is annoying. Some scrum sessions are extra, but why?
I think the root of the problem is the approach and mentality of managers, especially scrum masters, product managers and project managers.
One of the most frequent errors of approach in these roles is to assume that forecasting and planning are the same.
I think Scrum is based on empiricism. The most important principle in empiricism is that things cannot be predicted! When we prepare a backlog, we are actually announcing what we as a team have decided to do during a sprint to achieve the sprint goal. It can be said that the purpose of sprint is something like forecasting. But even if it is, its predictability is a byproduct. What is important is to plan and adjust how to reach the sprint goal. And to finally be able to show external stakeholders where we have reached.
This approach is very different from trying to show “how much” work we did. Planning means “what we will do” and “what we will achieve” and not “how much we try”. This distinction may seem subtle or even unimportant to some. But this difference in approach is very important. And it produces very different results.
Planning does not mean how many story points or how many cards or how many stories we do. Rather, it means what the focus of the publication should be. What is the purpose of the sprint? Where we have reached at the end of the sprint and what value we have created.
I talked about this in a short article that will take you about 4 minutes to read: