Planning Poker

Enterprise organizations trust Parabol to drive continuous improvement across their agile teams. Learn more about Parabol’s SSO, additional security features, and self-hosting options. When you’re all set, just select the final estimate and it’s ready to be taken forward for sprint planning or added directly to the sprint backlog. Parabol’s Sprint Poker tool guides you through this process automatically, making it easier to have a successful planning poker meeting. When you run your session with Sprint Poker, most of these steps are covered automatically. All participants can reference estimates and discussions in the tool at any time after the meeting, and they instantly receive a meeting summary by email.

• Items are added to the product backlog incrementally throughout the project’s lifespan.
• The goal of planning poker is to arrive at a shared understanding of the complexity of a task, and alignment on the level of effort required to complete it.
• Boost your business productivity by mapping out the key steps in a process.
• Selecting story points based on all those things are strongly recommended.
• If other members see the number during selection there have possibility of bias the estimation.

Planning poker is an estimation method that helps your Agile team project the amount of effort one user story in a product backlog could take to complete. From Chihuahuas to Great Danes, strawberries to watermelons, or mopeds to monster trucks, the possibilities are limited only by your imagination. Planning poker, also called Scrum poker, is a consensus-based, gamified technique for estimating, mostly used for timeboxing in Agile principles.

Step 3: Discuss the story

Also known as Scrum Poker or Pointing Poker the game results in a numerical score being assigned to a product feature or deliverable, such as that described by a “user story”. This score is the number of “story points” – a relative measure of complexity or risk – which can be fed into planning and forecasting processes. The Poker tool session begins with the customer or product owner reading an Agile-based user story or describing a desired feature to the team. Each estimator has their deck of Planning Poker cards, with the values representing either a story point number, ideal days, or whatever other unit the members mutually agreed upon. Scrum Poker was always just another name for Planning Poker or Estimation Poker until Agile Stationery’s Simon Gibbs created the first version optimised for Scrum teams.

In planning poker, members of the group make estimates by playing numbered cards face-down to the table, instead of speaking them aloud. By hiding the figures in this way, the group can avoid the cognitive bias of anchoring, where the first number spoken aloud sets a precedent for subsequent estimates. Planning poker is used in Scrum frameworks to help team members reach a consensus and make decisions. It works by having each member of the team select one card which corresponds to a numerical value that expresses their level of confidence in the effort it will take to complete an item. This helps ensure that an accurate estimate is created, ensuring projects are completed on time and within budget constraints. Planning poker is a planning and estimation technique used by Agile teams after a product backlog has been created.

Scrum Project Management: Advantages and Disadvantages

The goal is to arrive at a shared understanding of the complexity of the task, with everyone aligned on the level of effort required to complete it. Run your planning poker session with sticky notes, cards, or bring Jira tasks onto your Miro board. To give more visual context, add design files or diagrams so everyone is on the same page and equipped to estimate. Let go of inaccurate estimates and time-consuming planning poker meetings. Miro’s native Scrum poker feature helps you to run estimates efficiently with just a few clicks, right on the board where you hold your Agile practices.

In a study published by ScienceDirect, planning poker was used to estimate half of the work of a software project. First, planning poker estimates were statistically higher than individual estimates. Second, the poker estimates turned out to be more accurate than the individual estimates for the same tasks. Priority poker can help you make sense of your Jira backlog prioritization quite a bit. In this video, you’ll see how to run a planning poker online session with your team in Jira.

Stay on Top of Estimates On-The-Go

Agile42 enables leaders and their teams to create a resilient organization and a sustainable change process. We equip them with the tools they need daily to grow the business and foster the right organizational culture. In many cases, the estimates will already converge by the second round. The goal is for the estimators to converge on a single estimate that can be used for the story. It rarely takes more than three rounds, but continue the process as long as estimates are moving closer together.

Wideband Delphi is a consensus-based estimation process developed in the mid-20th century by the RAND Corporation, a nonprofit think tank. If you would like to become an Agile team leader, Simplilearn can help you take those critical first steps. The Certified ScrumMaster® (CSM) gives you a deep understanding of Agile methodologies.

The reason to use planning poker is to avoid the influence of the other participants. If a number is spoken, it can sound like a suggestion and influence the other participants’ sizing. Planning poker should force people to think independently and propose their numbers simultaneously. This is accomplished by requiring that all participants show their cards at the same time.

For this, Nikki’s using Foxly’s planning poker feature to prioritize her backlog in Jira Cloud. Use planning poker to improve the accuracy of estimates, given that it promotes discussion and understanding amongst team members. Planning poker encourages group collaboration, allowing everyone to come together and discuss what it will take for success. This allows team members to think independently while remaining connected as a whole. By providing multiple points of view on the approach, everyone also learns from each other in the process.