VDD vs Story Points
Story Points are a relative sizing tool for sprint planning within one team. VDD's Delivery Bricks are counted against fixed definitions, so the same work gets the same count in any team, and each Brick carries a calibrated price.
At a glance
Dimension
VDD
Story points
Unit of work
Delivery Brick, counted against 12 fixed categories
Story Point, a relative size agreed by the team
Price basis
Counted from the decomposition; the tech lead fixes the list
None. Points are converted to money through hours or velocity
Who estimates
Independent Verification Gate confirms outcome before it's billed
Team consensus, for example planning poker
Who verifies
An engineer who did not build the Unit
Not defined. The team sets its own Definition of Done
Forecast
P50/P85 from percentiles of weekly throughput
Average velocity, usually a single date
Scope changes
Yes. Same definitions for every team and vendor
Re-estimated at the next planning session
Comparable across teams
Improves: every Unit passes the same verification
No. Each team's scale is its own
Works with
Any delivery framework
Scrum and its derivatives
Why it changed
Story Points were designed to help a team plan its own sprint. They work when the same people size and deliver the work, and the number never leaves the room. Once points are used to price a Customer relationship or to compare vendors, they break: every team's scale is its own, and the count drifts upward as soon as it becomes a target.
AI makes the drift worse. When generation is cheap, the effort a point represents changes month to month. A Brick does not change: one API endpoint is one endpoint, whoever or whatever wrote it.
How the concepts map
Scrum with Story Points
VDD
User story
Delivery Unit: one verified user story
Point estimate
Brick count by category
Velocity
Weekly Brick throughput
Definition of Done
Independent Verification Gate
Spike
Research Spike, kept from Scrum, outside Brick pricing
Questions
Can we keep Story Points for sprint planning?
Yes. A team can keep points for internal planning and use Bricks for pricing, acceptance, and forecasts. The Playbook covers the transition.
How much history do we need to calibrate prices?
The Playbook calibrates Base Unit Rates from 15–20 completed projects. With less history, rates are marked provisional and revised after the first verified Units.