JIRA Points: The Zodiac for Engineering Managers
Description
A screenshot of a tweet from user Ronnie Chen (@rondoftw). The main tweet, posted on August 14, 2020, reads, 'JIRA points are astrology for engineering managers'. Below this, there is a reply from the same user that says, 'This tweet is now CLOSED, resolved as DUPLICATE' accompanied by a grinning face with sweat emoji. This reply links to another tweet from user Kat Maddox (@ctrlshifti) which states, 'agile is astrology for tech people'. The visual is a standard Twitter interface with dark mode. The joke criticizes the practice of assigning story points in Agile development, equating their predictive value to that of astrology, especially from the perspective of management who might rely on them heavily. The follow-up tweet adds a layer of insider humor by using JIRA's ticket resolution statuses to acknowledge that the original observation is not unique
Comments
7Comment deleted
Our team's velocity chart is less of a predictive tool and more of a Jackson Pollock painting. We call our estimation method 'abstract expressionism.'
I deal out planning-poker cards like tarot - if the Fibonacci spread looks auspicious it’s a 5-pointer, otherwise we blame Mercury in prod-retrograde and mark the epic as a duplicate
The best part about story points is watching a team argue for 30 minutes whether something is a 5 or an 8, then watching it take exactly 3 days regardless of what they picked
The real genius here is marking the tweet as 'CLOSED, resolved as DUPLICATE' - perfectly capturing how engineering managers treat story points with the same arbitrary precision as closing tickets. It's the software equivalent of reading tea leaves to predict delivery dates, except the tea leaves have Fibonacci numbers and everyone pretends they're statistically significant. The irony is that both the original observation and its resolution status are themselves perfect examples of the theater they're mocking - we all know this exact tweet exists in 47 other forms across Slack channels, but this one got 'accepted' by the community backlog
JIRA points: where managers divine sprint velocity from Fibonacci entrails, proving estimation's as scientific as a retro's 'what went right?'
Story points: a dimensionless Fibonacci currency that lets finance put astrology in a spreadsheet
Story points: the unit where two 8s become a 13 when the VP joins planning - please mark this take RESOLVED - DUPLICATE so velocity doesn’t dip before the QBR