Planning poker, also called Scrum poker, is a consensus-based technique for estimating, mostly used to estimate effort or relative size of user stories in software development. Planning Poker is a technique to determine user story size and to build consensus with the development team members. Planning poker is a popular and straightforward approach to estimating story size.
The method was first defined and named by James Grenning in 2002 and later popularized by Mike Cohn in the book Agile Estimating and Planning, whose company trade marked the term.
To start a poker planning session, the product owner or customer reads a agile user story or describes a feature to the estimators. 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. Only the development team plays estimation poker. The team lead and product owner don’t get a deck and don’t provide estimates. However, the team lead can act as a facilitator, and the product owner reads the user stories and provides details on user stories as needed.
"Planning Poker is a good way to come to a consensus without spending too much time on any one topic. It allows, or forces, people to voice their opinions, thoughts and concerns."
- Lori Schubring, Manager, Bemis Manufacturing Company
- Lori Schubring, Manager, Bemis Manufacturing Company
Planning poker benefits
Planning poker is a tool for estimating software development projects. It is a technique that minimizes anchoring by asking each team member to play their estimate card such that it cannot be seen by the other players. After each player has selected a card, all cards are exposed at once. Anchoring can occur if a team estimate is based on discussion alone. A team normally has a mix of conservative and optimistic estimators and there may be people who have agendas; developers are likely to want as much time as they can to do the job and the product owner or customer is likely to want it as quickly as possible. Planning poker exposes the potentially influential team member as being isolated in his or her opinion among the group. It then demands that she or he argue the case against the prevailing opinion. If a group is able to express its unity in this manner they are more likely to have faith in their original estimates. If the influential person has a good case to argue everyone will see sense and follow, but at least the rest of the team won't have been anchored; instead they will have listened to reason.
Planning poker is a tool for estimating software development projects. It is a technique that minimizes anchoring by asking each team member to play their estimate card such that it cannot be seen by the other players. After each player has selected a card, all cards are exposed at once. Anchoring can occur if a team estimate is based on discussion alone. A team normally has a mix of conservative and optimistic estimators and there may be people who have agendas; developers are likely to want as much time as they can to do the job and the product owner or customer is likely to want it as quickly as possible. Planning poker exposes the potentially influential team member as being isolated in his or her opinion among the group. It then demands that she or he argue the case against the prevailing opinion. If a group is able to express its unity in this manner they are more likely to have faith in their original estimates. If the influential person has a good case to argue everyone will see sense and follow, but at least the rest of the team won't have been anchored; instead they will have listened to reason.
