[fugue88]

To use story points, you would have a linear model of some sort so that you could calculate how long, on average, a story point would take to complete.

If you know how to do that (the model), you could apply the exact same technique to the "estimated time" numbers to get a more realistic "expected time."

Changing from time to points won't improve the developer estimates at all; instead, it will further obfuscate them and reduce accountability, in my opinion.

[jbrun]

Thanks, that is my inclination as well.

[jamesbritt]

DanielBMarkham is correct.

The goal is to first get a feel for estimating tasks relative to each other.

Then, over time, see how many story points you complete in a given time, and eventually use that to make a correlation between points and hours.

The advantage of not going straight to time estimates is that you avoid the tendency to think you can get more done in a given time that is realistic.