Agile Poker is a versatile toolkit for estimating your product backlog to get it ready for grooming and planning.It is heavily inspired by Planning Poker® - but not limited to - and derives the bestpractices from industry standard estimation techniques.

Planning Poker is a highly efficient agile planning and estimating technique which has become exceptionally well-known over recent years. It is based on a procedure known as Wideband Delphi that was made by the RAND Corporation between 1940 and 1968, the exact year unknown. Agile Poker is a well-known app for Jira for quick and convenient planning and estimations for both remote and co-located teams. To prioritise the recommendations, we used a custom nine-point scale (0 = not important, 8 = extremely important) inspired by the planning poker agile method 27. These recommendations are highly.

Key highlights:

• Customisable estimation values
• Online presence
• Dynamic distribution chart of estimate values

While Agile Poker is currently available in the marketplace as a free-preview extension, it isplanned to become a paid one. Exact licensing details (i.e. whether it will be tier-basedor per user pricing, or the payment method itself) will be known later. We are in theprocess of evaluating possible solutions fulfilling our technical and legal requirements.

This is a method where you can encourage employee engagement through controlled self-organization and clarified value and decision-making. How do we play Delegation Poker? Each team plays this game differently, so you can follow some of the more common rules we’re sharing here or you can make up your own. Planning poker (also known as Scrum poker) is a consensus-based, gamified technique for estimating, mostly used to estimate effort or relative size of development goals in software development.

Poker Method In Agile Methodology

Start estimation by clicking extension icon (which looks like a set of four cards) in the top-right menu above the Board:

A dialog will popup where you can estimate items from your backlog:

Each team member can estimate work items in secrecy, estimations are being hidden until Scrum Master decides to reveal them or if last session participant puts his/her estimate:

Dynamic chart shows distribution of estimate values.At the results conclusion the final choice can be stored back into issue's Story Points field (or any other effort type unit depending on development process).

Configuring Agile Poker Session

We do our bests to provide sensible defaults for Agile Poker configuration but sometimes the defaults may be not enough for you.

• You can easily add, remove possible values using the simple user interface shown below:

• If you want to give full control over poker session to only one user you can choose a session scrum master.

2018-09-24 - 1.2.0

Poker Method In Agile Project Management

• Allow people from outside the project team to participate in the session (requires access to Graph API - upgrade confirmation is needed)
• Added an smile icon for collecting feedback
• Agile Poker dialog now initializes faster
• Minor UI/UX improvements
• Added distribution chart of estimate values

2018-09-17 - 1.0.11

• Settings are now project-scoped
• The sequence of items in session is determined according to priority on backlog
• Handle extension initialization error (and display meaningful message in the UI)

2018-09-11 - 1.0.7

• Show online presence of the participants in the session
• Allow customizing the estimation values to your own list
• Add Scrum Master role - the sole person who can manage the ongoing session (close, save final estimate, reset)

2018-09-05 - 1.0.0

• Initial release that contains basic Planning Poker functionality

Send feature requests, bug reports or any other questions to our support team at support@spartez.com.

Happy estimating!

PLANNING POKER ® is a registered trademark of Mountain Goat Software, LLC

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.

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.

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.

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.