Golden Stories are a small set of well-understood baseline stories that the team agrees to peg with certain point values. These are used as references for future pointing.
As the team estimates new stories, they can compare them to the golden stories which act as an established agreed upon baseline. So when a story “Fix a typo in the main menu” arrives the team can compare the new story directly to the golden Stories: “Is this typo harder or easier than the “Login” golden story?”. The team calibrates the estimate and explores and hidden scope or assumptions.
A Golden Story makes inflation visible, encourages consistent thinking, and speeds alignment. Use it as a living reference: revisit it when your codebase or process changes, and keep the team trained to compare to an established baseline, not guess.
Discussions for your team
- Agree on which story are well understood by the team and can be Golden Stories.
- How the team be encouraged and reminded to compare new stories to the Golden Stories?
- When should the set of Golden Stories be updated?