Estimating user stories and technical tasks

Many Scrum teams estimate user stories using story points. A story point is an arbitrary value based on the relative complexity compared to other stories. Many teams do this in unique ways, like using Fibonacci numbers, T-shirt sizes or dots, and continuously tune their system over time. By default GreenHopper uses numerical values, but it can be configured to fit any system by using custom fields.

Once user stories are prioritised, they could be broken down into technical tasks during the planning session. Unlike user stories, technical tasks may be estimated using an absolute value, like actual hours. Some teams do this prior to their sprint planning while others do it at a later time.

No matter how your team estimates effort, complete statistics for the sprint and release version summaries are updated instantly to help guide sprint planning.