[cpascal]

My company has been experimenting with doing our feature estimations in LOC changed instead of points (1, 2, 3, 5). The general idea being that point estimation can vary between engineers based on ability, but LOC changed should be similar among engineers. This is supposed to make it easier to answer management's favorite question of "How long is this gonna take?". The answer is calculated using a team's historical average LOC/hr rate.

It remains to be seen if our estimates are any better.

[Cpoll]

I wonder if LOC changed isn't often reversely proportional to time taken.

500 LOC feature: Add a new route that does something boring; 5 story points.

5 LOC feature: Fix mysterious performance degradation in X; 13 story points.

[cpascal]

I think for defect estimation you are right, but for feature estimation (new code, not fixing bad code) the correlation is positive.