Story Point Calibration - Getting Your Team Aligned
Our team's estimates are all over the place. What one dev calls a 3, another calls an 8. How do you calibrate story points so everyone is on the same page?
Create reference stories. Pick 3-5 completed stories that everyone agrees on: one clear 2-pointer, one obvious 5, one definite 8. Document them with screenshots and code examples. Before every planning session, quickly review these anchors.
New team members study them during onboarding. We've done this for 2 years and variance dropped from ±5 points to ±2.
The issue isn't the numbers, it's what they represent. Have an explicit conversation: are we estimating complexity, effort, or uncertainty? Our team decided "1 point = simplest possible story we'd ever do" and built from there. Document this definition in your wiki.
Do a calibration workshop quarterly. Pull random completed stories, estimate them blind, then compare to actuals. Where you diverge reveals assumptions. We discovered our frontend devs estimated UI work 2x lower than backend devs estimated API work. Talking through it aligned us.
Unpopular opinion: perfect calibration is impossible and not worth chasing. As long as your team's historical velocity is consistent, individual story variance doesn't matter. Focus on calibrating epic-level estimates where misalignment actually impacts roadmaps.