[mynameisvlad]

> We are not encountering similar sets of problems nor are able to use similar solutions or even refer to familiar tooling all of the time.

Frankly, yes we are. There’s only so many ways to solve a problem and there’s only so many problems to solve in a particular field.

A senior engineer should have had enough experience to at least have a high level understanding of what is going on, and to correlate that experience with approximate work. If that’s not possible, the work is just not scoped down enough.

A team of engineers, given their combined experience and business knowledge should pretty easily come up with a story point estimate based on existing completed work. And that’s the entire point of the refinement and estimation process: getting enough information about a piece of work, then working together to come to a decision on an estimate.

Will that be right all the time? No. But that doesn’t mean the value is useless, it provides plenty of information on if a piece of work is small, medium or large, as well as if it’s expected to take a few hours, days or weeks. And who better to come up with that number than the people actually working on the issues?