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Planning Poker

Spredfast 2011

+Planning Poker

Planning Poker is attributed to Greening and is fairly a recent development (2002)

Planning Poker combines expert opinion, analogy, and disaggregation into a fun approach to estimating that results in quick, unambiguous estimates.

Participants in Planning Poker include the entire development team (Developers and QA)

+Story Points

Used to denote a name of the estimating unit Derived from calling a unit of work a user

story

Based on a combination of size and complexity of the work

Produces Unitless but numerically relevant numbers A 10 point story would take twice as long as

a 5 point story

+Story Points

Have three key benefitsForces the use of relative estimating Focuses us on estimating the size, not the duration

Puts estimates in units we can add together

Uses Fibonacci sequence – 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, …

+Planning Poker - Steps

1. Each estimator is given a deck of cards, each card has a valid estimate written on it

2. Customer/Product owner reads a story and the team briefly discusses

3. Each estimator selects a card that’s his/her estimate

4. Cards are turned over so all can see them

5. Discuss Differences (especially outliers)

6. Re-estimate until estimates converge

+Planning Poker – Why it Works

Those who do the work, will estimate the work

Estimators are required to justify their estimates

Focuses most estimates within an approximate one order of magnitude

Combining of individual estimates through group discussion leads to better estimates

Estimates are constrained to a set of values so we don’t waste time in meaningless arguments

+Planning Poker – Side Effects

Greater understanding of work to be completed

Expectation setting

Implementation hints

High Level architecture and design discussion

Ownership of estimate