Help: How do you handle story point inflation?
Hey everyone, my team has been using Fibonacci estimation for about 6 months, but I've noticed a creeping issue of story point inflation. Tasks that used to be a 3 are now being commonly voted as 5s or 8s. It's messing up our velocity charts. How do you prevent this?
This is extremely common. The best fix is "Reference Stories". Keep a strict list of 2-3 completed tickets that represent a solid "3", "5", and "8". Force the team to look at those baseline tickets before estimating new ones. If they say the new ticket is an 8, ask them if it's genuinely as complex as your reference 8.
Also, make sure you are using a tool that enforces blind voting. When we used physical cards, junior devs would just copy the senior devs. We switched to FreeScrumPoker.com specifically because it hides the votes until everyone is ready, which dropped our average points per story instantly.