Planning Poker is a collaborative estimation technique used by Agile teams to estimate the effort required to complete a task or a user story. It combines expert opinion, analogy, and disaggregation into a single, repeatable process that allows teams to quickly reach a consensus.
How Planning Poker Works
- Preparation: The product owner or facilitator selects a user story from the product backlog that needs estimation and presents it to the team.
- Discussion: The team discusses the user story to ensure everyone understands the requirements, scope, and any uncertainties or complexities involved.
- Estimation: Each team member privately selects a card from a deck (usually based on the Fibonacci sequence: 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, etc.) that represents their estimate of the story’s effort.
- Reveal: All team members simultaneously reveal their selected cards.
- Discussion: If there is a significant variance in estimates, the team discusses the reasons for the differences. Team members with the highest and lowest estimates explain their reasoning.
- Re-estimation: After the discussion, the team members re-estimate by selecting a card again. This process is repeated until the team reaches a consensus.
- Document: The agreed-upon estimate is recorded for the user story.
Benefits of Planning Poker
- Inclusive: Involves all team members, ensuring that everyone’s perspective is considered.
- Collaborative: Encourages discussion and knowledge sharing among team members.
- Accurate: Combines the collective wisdom of the team, leading to more accurate estimates.
- Engaging: Makes the estimation process interactive and engaging, helping to maintain team focus and motivation.
- Reduces Anchoring: Since estimates are revealed simultaneously, it reduces the bias of anchoring to the first number suggested.
When to Use Planning Poker
- During Sprint Planning: To estimate the effort for user stories to be included in the upcoming sprint.
- Backlog Refinement Sessions: To ensure that the backlog is well-defined and estimated ahead of sprint planning.
- For New or Complex Stories: When user stories are new or particularly complex and require detailed discussion and estimation.
Tips for Effective Planning Poker
- Keep the Discussion Focused: Ensure discussions are relevant and focused on the story at hand.
- Limit Session Length: Keep estimation sessions to a manageable length to maintain team energy and focus.
- Review Regularly: Regularly review and adjust the estimation process to improve its accuracy and efficiency over time.
By using Planning Poker, Agile teams can improve their estimation accuracy and foster a collaborative and inclusive environment for making decisions about the effort required for their work.
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