[gedy]

So something like: automate unit tests, where the tests are X points where you'd not have done these before?

Not snarking, but if they are automated away, then isn't this like 0 story points for effort/complexity?

[bdangubic]

hehe not snarky at all - great question. this was heavily discussed but in order to measure productivity gains (we are phasing this out now) we kept the estimations the same as before. as my colleague put it you don’t estimate based on “10x developer” so we applied the same concept. now that everyone is “on board” we are phasing this out

[gedy]

Thanks, I'm probably a kook but I've never wanted to put any non-product, user-visible feature-related tasks on the board with story points (tests, code cleanup, etc) and just folded that into the related user work (mainly to avoid some product person thinking they "own" that and can make technical decisions).

So the product velocity didn't exactly go up, but you are now producing less technical debt (hopefully) with a similar velocity, sounds reasonable.