[jonpurdy]

Everyone is correct in this thread. The stimulation of discussion is useful, and numbers are arbitrary.

Instead of worrying about 5 vs 8 though, the team should be discussing relative difficulty: is story B easier/more difficult/complex than story A? And then ranking stories based on the relative difficulty of each other.

Story points can then be derived based on that ranking, if the team chooses. They're useful for being applied to velocity calculation, and also helpful when picking up a story to work on (maybe a bad idea to start an 8 pointer on a Friday).

(I have a SM cert, working as a TPM. I applying Agile principles to teams, but modified to how they want to work and be most effective. No militant Scrum here.)

[seanhunter]

That for sure seems useful. "Hey Sally, you think B is harder than A. Why do you think it's hard?" "Hey Bob, you disagreed with Sally and think B is easier, why is that?"...is very likely to lead to a useful conversation in terms of everyone getting in sync and may well lead to hidden information being brought out into the open, which is a good thing. In general I think relative value/preference type conversations tend to reveal a lot.

[_y5hn]

Attention! Discussing story points is no longer allowed during planning. After voting, teams are to discuss relative story points, swapping points between each two story. This is expected to increase efficiency and coherence. Rule enforcement commencing beginning of next month after the first weekend.