Scrum: Story Points for Bugs #agile #xp

As I mentioned before I mostly work in an Agile Scrum environment, with a little eXtreme Programming thrown in. This week I saw some messages go on the Scrum Development list by asking about assigning Story Points to bugs. There were some good opinions going by, and I hold to the idea that bugs fall into two categories:

Programmer Errors
Missed Requirements

The first is unavoidable, although they can be reduced with automated testing based on the User Story and Unit Testing of the underlying code.

As a users I want to move relations to a company

The second is an issue for the Project Owner, when the PO describes the User Story and leaves out certain requirements I believe that those are out of scope for the User Story. I’ll give an example of a User Story right.

The PO might neglect to add that the user might want to create a new company or a new relation in this flow and actually meant to word the User Story below. And naturally a User Story as in the example is still acceptable when the PO adds the requirements to the User Story description.

As a users I want to add or move a new or existing relations to a new or existing company

It’s also a task of the Scrum Team Members to ask the questions which will uncover these deficiencies in the User Story, so that deficiencies in the requirements are avoided.