What is Planning Poker?

Planning Poker is an agile estimating and planning technique that is consensus based. To start a poker planning session, the product owner or customer reads an agile user story or describes a feature to the estimators.

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Each estimator is holding a deck of Planning Poker cards with values like 0, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 20, 40 and 100, which is the sequence we recommend. The values represent the number of story points, ideal days, or other units in which the team estimates.

The estimators discuss the feature, asking questions of the product owner as needed. When the feature has been fully discussed, each estimator privately selects one card to represent his or her estimate. All cards are then revealed at the same time.

If all estimators selected the same value, that becomes the estimate. If not, the estimators discuss their estimates. The high and low estimators should especially share their reasons. After further discussion, each estimator reselects an estimate card, and all cards are again revealed at the same time.

Poker Planning Online

The poker planning process is repeated until consensus is achieved or until the estimators decide that agile estimating and planning of a particular item needs to be deferred until additional information can be acquired.

When should we engage in Planning Poker?

Most teams will hold a Planning Poker session shortly after an initial product backlog is written. This session (which may be spread over multiple days) is used to create initial estimates useful in scoping or sizing the project.

Because product backlog items (usually in the form of user stories) will continue to be added throughout the project, most teams will find it helpful to conduct subsequent agile estimating and planning sessions once per iteration. Usually this is done a few days before the end of the iteration and immediately following a daily standup, since the whole team is together at that time anyway.

How does poker planning work with a distributed team?

Simple: go to PlanningPoker.com. Mountain Goat Software helped develop that website to offer it as a free resource to the agile community. A product owner, ScrumMaster or agile coach can log in and preload a set of items to be estimated. A private URL can then be shared with estimators who log in and join a conference call or Skype session. Agile estimating and planning then proceeds as it would in person.

Does Planning Poker work?

Absolutely. Teams estimating with Planning Poker consistently report that they arrive at more accurate estimates than with any technique they'd used before.

One reason Planning Poker leads to better estimates is because it brings together multiple expert opinions. Because these experts form a cross-functional team from all disciplines on a software project, they are better suited to the estimation task than anyone else.

After completing a thorough review of the literature on software estimation, Magne Jørgensen, Ph.D., of the Simula Research Lab concluded that “the people most competent in solving the task should estimate it.”

Second, a lively dialogue ensues during poker planning, and estimators are called upon by their peers to justify their estimates. Researchers have found that this improves estimate accuracy, especially on items with a lot of uncertainty as we find on most software projects.

Further, being asked to justify estimates has also been shown to result in estimates that better compensate for missing information. This is important on an agile project because the user stories being estimated are often intentionally vague.

Additionally, studies have shown that averaging individual estimates during agile estimating and planning leads to better results as do group discussions of estimates.

How can I get Planning Poker cards?

Planning Poker cards are available in the Mountain Goat Software store. Mountain Goat Software's branded Planning Poker cards are sold at cost as a courtesy to the agile community.

Planning Poker Waste Of Time Zone

Our full-color cards are the absolute highest-quality cards available anywhere. They are manufactured by the same company that prints many of the world's most popular playing card brands, including Bicycle, Bee, and the World Poker Tour.

We also offer royalty-free licenses to organizations that wish to produce their own cards. The license is available here: https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/agile/planning-poker/license

Recommended Resources Related To Planning Poker

• How Can We Get the Best Estimates of Story Size?
  
• The Best Way to Establish a Baseline When Playing Planning Poker
  
• Don’t Average During Planning Poker
  
• Agile Estimating
  

Courses Related To Planning Poker

Scrum Foundations Video Series

All the foundational knowledge of Scrum including: the framework, values, different roles, meetings, backlogs, and improving efficiency & quality.

Buy Planning Poker^® decks:

Estimating is one of the supporting activities in Scrum and other agile processes. This means the process of assessing the size of a story, i.e. how long it will take, how much work it is to implement, how expensive it is, or however you want to put it. In Scrum, estimating is a team activity. For each story, the whole team participates in the estimation process. Planning Poker^® (sometimes called Scrum poker) is a simple but powerful tool that makes team-estimating faster, more accurate, and more fun. The term was coined by James Grenning and popularized by Mike Cohn.

Estimating without Planning Poker

Here’s a typical problem with team estimates. Let’s say we are in a sprint planning meeting and the Product Owner says:

So the team starts thinking about how long the story will take (in ideal man-days in this case)….

Mr A believes that he knows exactly what needs to be done, so he thinks this will take 3 days. Mrs B and C are more pessimistic. Mr D and E are slacking off. So Mr A says ”3 days”.

This makes B and C confused. They start doubting their own estimates. Mr E wakes up and doesn’t really know what is being estimated. D is still dozing.The product owner asks for the rest of the team’s estimates.

As you can see, the rest of the team has been heavily influenced by A, just because A spoke up first. This is very risky! Both B and C thought it would take significantly longer than 3 days, their doubts should be aired!

Estimating with Planning Poker

Now imagine that each team member is holding a deck of cards, containing the following cards:

Let’s redo the estimation. The product owner says:

Once again, the team starts thinking about how long the story will take.

Planning Poker Cards

This time nobody blurts anything out. Instead they all have to present a card, face down, containing their estimate. Everybody has to present a card, so Mr D and E wake up. Mr D admits that he was sleeping and asks what the story is about. It’s harder to slack off when doing estimates this way :o) When they are done, all cards are turned over simultaneously, revealing everyone’s estimates.

Whoops! Big divergence here. The team, in particular Mr A and Mrs C, need to discuss this story and why their estimates are so wildly different. After some discussion, Mr A realizes that he has forgotten some important tasks that need to be included in the story. Mrs C realizes that, with the design that Mr A presented, the story might be smaller than 20. After the discussion (3 minutes in total) they do another estimation round for that same story.

Convergence! OK, not complete convergence. But they agree that an estimate of 5 should be close enough. Next story.

Why the strange number series?

The higher numbers have less granularity. Why? Why is there no 21 for example? Several reasons:

• Speed up the estimation process by limiting the number of choices (i.e. number of cards).
• Avoid a false sense of accuracy for high estimates.
• Encourage the team to split large stories into smaller ones.

A high estimate (> 20 for example) usually means that the story is not well understood in detail. It would be a waste of time to discuss whether the story is 19, 20, or 22.5. It is simply a big story, and a 20 will reflect that. If you want to get into detail, break the story down into several smaller stories. Smaller stories can be estimated in greater detail.

Special cards

How do I get a hold of Planning Poker decks?

We sell Planning Poker decks online, just press the link below.

The coffee cup card was our addition to the default series :o)

Planning Poker Waste Of Time Zones

Planning Poker^® is a reg. trademark of Mountain Goat Software, LLC. Sequence of values is (C) Mountain Goat Software, LLC.