Hi Ujjwal — the first thing I’ll say is — if you are getting value in estimating as a team, carry on doing it! Gaining a common understanding about stories through conversations at the right time is extremely valuable.

My default practice for gaining such understanding is through story slicing activities rather than estimation. The main problems with using estimation as the default are:

— There is a risk that no slicing will be done (and slicing is an absolutely key practice for gaining benefit of agile software development)

— Converging on a solution (and timeline) prematurely. Estimating how long the implementation of a solution for a story “as is” is often less effective than having explicit “capability slicing” (followed by just-in-time “implementation slicing”) conversations.

You can read more about capability and implementation slicing here: https://medium.com/@neil2killick/the-essence-of-story-slicing-in-agile-development-fc16a1226941