Translate Agile T-shirt Sizes into Story Points

Owned by Mark Hagenberg
Last updated: Feb 11, 2021 by Vincent Mutambuki
1 min read

Jira Challenge

Agile teams often use T-shirt sizes (XS, S, M, L, XL) instead of Story Points to describe the effort level of their work. This can be a lot simpler than remembering the Fibonacci scale! However, T-shirt sizes don't work well for reports. For example, charting your team's Velocity requires that you use a number field.

So how can you translate T-shirt sizes into Story Points in Jira?

Abacus Solution

Here's how to use the Abacus – Jira Calculator app to solve this problem:

  1. Create a Numeric formula setting your T-shirt size field value field to Story points.

  2. Create a new Execution Plan  

  3. Set a trigger to define When you want the execution to take place

  4. Use the Action named Map Field Values to map T-Shirt size field to numeric Story Point field.

  5. When the execution plan runs, Abacus will map and translate the select field values to Story Points.