I'm leaving Stockholm today after working with Crisp on Scrum training this week. In my bag are the new, upgraded, Crisp planning poker cards. Developers have been asking for more colors. We now have eight colors to support a Scrum team so each person has a different color. And the Planning Poker cards need numbers on the corners of the cards so you can seen the numbers when you hold a deck in your hand. The new cards solve these problems and Crisp has the only good web site for ordering Planning Poker cards so get them here!
The Fibonacci sequence is just one of several that are used in project planning poker. It is difficult to accurately estimate large units of work and it is easy to get bogged down in hours vs days discussions if your numbers are too 'realistic'.
There are three best practices that have emerged for both Scrum and XP - User Stories, Planning Poker, and Scrum Boards. Lots of people have asked where to get Poker Planning cards. Many companies make these cards and none of them are as easy to sort as the color coded cards from Crisp in Sweden.
- Scrumpoker online is an open source web implementation of planning poker for scrum teams to determine the complexity of stories. It aims to integrate ticketing systems like.
- 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. Scrum Foundations Video Series.
Estimating is one of the core 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, or how expensive it is.
In Scrum, estimating is a team activity. For each story, the whole team participates in the estimation process.
Planning poker is a simple but powerful tool that makes team-estimating faster, more accurate, and more fun. Some companies have eliminated 80% of their planning costs and are able to get better estimates using Planning Poker! Even if you are stuck in the mire of Waterfall planning these cards can help you avoid missed dates and death marches. Recommended for all developers.
Agile Concepts: Estimating and Planning Poker
Most Agile frameworks include some form of estimation*. Estimating the relative size of stories in terms of effort/time can help a team to decide how many of the highest priority stories from the product backlog can be taken on in a single sprint.
Estimating is also used to measure the velocity of a team (the amount of work it gets through per sprint), helping the business to forecast and budget product development.
Estimating using story points
The most common way of estimating the size of user stories in Scrum is by allocating story points. Story points are just numbers drawn from a pool of numbers of a set size e.g. a story could have 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 20, 40 or 100 story points.
The reason for using a Fibonacci-like sequence of numbers is to encourage stories to be estimated relatively (e.g. that story looks like it requires about twice the effort for a story we've already agreed is a 2 so it's probably a 5) and to emphasise that the larger the story, the more uncertain the estimate.
Who estimates?
A Scrum team will estimate story points during backlog refinement or perhaps as part of a dedicated session. It's essential that the whole team is involved in the process of estimation so that the estimates are made by the people who will actually be doing the work and are therefore as accurate as possible.
When a story is ready for estimation – i.e. when it is small enough to fit within a single sprint and when the acceptance criteria have been agreed by the scrum team – the team then discusses its relative size and reaches consensus over how many story points of effort it requires.
Stories may be estimated before these criteria are met but should be revisited.
The most common way to do this is Scrum is by playing planning poker.
Planning poker
In planning poker each member of the team gets a set of playing cards with the allowable story points printed on the front as well as extra cards for don't know (?), infinity or, sometimes, to indicate it's time for a coffee break.
Once the story is ready to be estimated, there is a round of voting. At the same time, all team members hold up the card which corresponds to their estimate.
If all the team members agree then the story is given that number of points and the team moves on.
If there are discrepancies then the ScrumMaster facilitates a discussion where team members can further explore what's required, investigate acceptance criteria further etc. There is then another round of voting and this repeats until consensus is achieved.
Scrum Planning Poker Guidelines
It's particularly important to discuss the lowest and highest estimates from the team, this often leads to clarifications with the Product Owner and an updated set of assumptions for the estimate (which should be captured).
Estimating controversy
*Estimating is a hot button topic in Agile right now. Some argue that estimating is a process of the kind that Agile should be pushing to the background in favour of individuals and interactions and also a form of contracting which should be de-emphasised in favour of customer collaboration. They argue that estimating how long it will take to deliver a product – the development of which will be inherently unpredictable – based on guesswork is a useless activity which fits the incremental model better than it fits a purely iterative one (see Agile vs Waterfall).
Scrum Poker online, free
The reality is in real world scenarios it is almost always critically important to have ability to forward plan. Story points and velocity give a pragmatic way to do this and often on the projects where Scrum is used there is a good understanding of the type of work being done and the estimates are of a good standard.
Using techniques like triangulation and reference stories aid the process.
Scrum Planning Poker App
Whether you think it's a futile box-ticking exercise or a useful way for businesses to plan product development, it's important as practitioners that we understand how to estimate effectively.
