Crown casino restaurants kitchen workshop. When creating a plan—whether it be a big project release plan or a smaller two-weeks' timebox plan—you essentially need to know three things:
- Tasks —What are the requirements? What do you need to do?
- Size — How big are these tasks compared with one another? How long will these take to complete?
- Priorities — Which tasks need to be done first because others depend on them? Which tasks are most important regardless of dependencies?
It's very much like creating a recipe: assemble the right ingredients, measure them to the correct proportions, and then mix them together in the right order.
In an Agile project the prioritisation of tasks is done by the business. It is their project after all; they have the most information about value, they understand the market, they have an idea of what features should be delivered next. Prioritisation is not a decision to be made by the development team.
Steps to start a Planning Poker. To start a Planning poker session, the customer or the product owner should read an agile story or describe a feature of the estimators. Each estimator would be holding a deck of planning poker cards with values like 0,1,2,3,5,8,13,20,40,100 which is the sequence that is recommended. Agile development teams complete work in sprints, typically 2-3 week periods during which a team works exclusively on an itemized to-do list known as a sprint backlog. During sprint planning, teams work together to estimate the level of effort required for development of each upcoming backlog item (also called user stories) through a process called effort pointing. Each team member that is participating in the decision using Planning Poker will get cards with numbers representing the relative time it will take to implement a user story. Typically, the deck will have numbers representing the Fibonacci sequence starting with zero: 0, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13 and so on. Agile Estimation Techniques 1. Planning poker is an agile estimation technique that makes use of story points to estimate the. If you think about T-shirts, there are multiple sizes to choose from. More specifically – there is. Sometimes it can be.
The size of each task, however, is something that the development team is qualified to estimate. If I want a new wall built in my garden whose estimate should I trust more: mine (the person who commissions the work) or the builders (who do this job day-in, day-out for a living)?
When planning, we use a tool called planning poker to help estimate the relative size of tasks.
Planning poker
Planning poker, or Scrum poker, is a very effective, collaborative planning tool that was first defined by James Grenning in 2002, and made popular by Mike Cohn, founder of Mountain Goat Software.
Each estimator takes a set of planning poker cards, consisting of a 0, ½, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 20, 40, 100 and optionally a ? for instances where you simply have no idea), and ‘play' progresses as follows, the rules are pretty simple:
- Read out the next task.
- Discuss the task: The task is discussed by those who understand what it's about, so that the whole team gains clarity about what they are being asked to estimate.
- Estimate: Everyone selects a card representing how big they think the task to be. Once everyone has selected, we reveal our score at the same time. This is to prevent other team members' estimates influencing your own.
- Lowest vs highest: If there is not universal consensus, ask whoever scored the lowest and highest why they thought this was.
- Re-estimate: Given these new insights everyone re-estimates.
- Gain consensus: Once consensus has been gained that score is recorded with the task to which it relates. This consensus can be done by repeatedly re-estimating, but more often in our team if most have scored, say 8, and one member still estimates a 5, then she may simply say that they are happy to go with the rest of the group.
Benefits
Relative
One of the immediate benefits of planning poker is that it allows you to estimate tasks relative to one another. You may not be in a position to know exactly how long something will take to do, but it should always be easier to estimate whether it would take more effort or less effort than a similar task that you have already completed and know how long it took.
Think of it this way, it doesn't really matter if you measure the length of your desk in metres and centimetres, feet and inches, or even Post-it notes and pencils, so long as everyone on your team is also using the same scale.
Some teams use an arbitrary unit called ‘story points' where they know the size of one story point, others measure in ideal days. We estimate in ideal hours. Tiki island slots online.
We also take into account how many people we anticipate will be working on the task. So if we think the task will take one hour with three developers then we'd score it as a three. Although it only occurred to me a couple of weeks ago that we also need to build in quality assurance/testing time into our estimates.
One general rule we have is that if a task is scored as a 13 or above then it needs to be broken down into smaller tasks. Large tasks are generally more complex and therefore harder to estimate with any degree of accuracy. Breaking down the task into smaller pieces removes some of this risk.
Equal voice
Another benefit is that this style of estimating gives everyone on the team an equal voice. I remember one of the first times we used planning poker when one particular task was discussed, it involved cleaning up a few directories in our media library. My colleague Steve and I estimated something small, like a 5 or 8. Duncan, who had only been in the job for about six weeks estimated 100.
Agile Poker Cards
Why so high, Duncan? Even though he was relatively inexperienced in terms of the job as a whole it turns out he had the most up-to-date experience of our media library, and he reported that it was a right royal mess. It would take a much longer time to sort out than either Steve or I had anticipated.
Equal contribution
Related is the feeling by the whole team that they have all contributed to the plan. And people often feel more committed to a plan that they have had input on. The result is a more dedicated, self-organising team.
Conclusion
We've found planning poker to be a very effective tool for estimating the relative size of project tasks. It allows the whole team to understand what work is coming up, and have their say on how simple or complex the tasks are.
It also allows us to chart the velocity of the team from sprint to sprint, which in turns helps us with future planning as it gives us a more accurate idea of how much work we are likely to complete from sprint to sprint.
More reading
Luis Goncalves, co-author of the excellent book Getting value out of Agile Retrospectives has written a really useful article about planning poker:
In Agile Methodology, one term that you will regularly come across is 'Planning Poker', but what is it exactly? Well, sadly, it's not organizing a game of stud poker with your workmates in your lunch break because the business you work for has just adopted Agile. As attractive as that may sound to some, Planning Poker is something different although with some similarities, hence the origin of its name and our freedom to indulge in a few analogies here. It still contains the three core elements of the famous card game, namely strategy, skill, and to a certain degree gambling, but where it differs most is that this is a team game, not an individual one.
The Creation of Planning Poker
Best online blackjack games. In one sentence perhaps Planning Poker could best be described as an estimation and planning technique which is based on team consensus and used primarily after a product backlog is written. The creation of the tool in 2002 is accredited to James Grenning who felt that the prevalent estimation approach at that time, known as Wideband Delphi, was both too time-consuming and had serious limitations in its involvement of the most suitable members of the entire team. Wideband Delphi had its roots in the 1950s and was still being used at the turn of the century along with other rather antiquated techniques.
The Poker Game and the Players
Planning Poker depends upon input from all the experts with their different fields of expertise who are actively involved in a project's story. From the product owner to customers, programmers, testers, database engineers and designers, all those relevant within the cross-functional team to what is going on and to what is envisaged. Estimation in any project, not least software development, is a major challenge needing careful thought and implementation and, as teams and projects increase in size, inadequate planning and incorrect estimations will usually prove disastrous. By involving more specialized and competent people in estimating the work effort required to implement the same project, estimates will undoubtedly be far more accurate. Similarly, if the whole team takes part, greater collaboration naturally ensues, whilst, at the same time, any problematic issues will be discovered earlier in the project.
The Rounds in the Game
- The product owner or customer reads an agile user story or describes a feature to those assigned the task of estimating.
- Those same estimators, namely the team members of the group, fully discuss the feature and, where needed, ask the product owner any relevant questions for greater clarification.
- Once this discussion is finished, each estimator selects one card with a numerical value equivalent to his or her estimate of the level of complexity of the story. The card is then placed face down on the table. The number on the card shows each person's individual estimation of the story points needed to complete, based on the natural Fibonacci Scale; 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21…, although slight variations to that scale or other units of measurement may be used.
- The cards are then turned over and shown simultaneously by the estimators. If this was poker the card game, it would be the moment when we're all on the edge of our seats watching the end of a Las Vegas casino film; an emotionless, granite-faced player finally turns over his cards to reveal his winning or losing hand. In Planning Poker it's not quite so dramatic and doesn't end there.
- Should the estimators all select the same number that obviously becomes the final estimate. However this is rare, so in most cases where all the estimators' numbers are relatively similar, those who have chosen the highest and lowest values explain the rationale behind their choice of number to the group and a consensus is reached. Having to justify their logical basis for estimation at this stage compensates for information which may have been missing from the rationale of others in the team.
- If the reasoning and explanations have finished and no consensus can been reached, the estimators repeat the process from round 3 and continue until an agreed number is found. It is unlikely that any equal split will be resolved that quickly so in these circumstances rounding up rather than rounding down takes place. For example, if there was an equal split in story points between 5 and 8 on the Fibonacci scale, a team would choose 8.
- Repetition of the process is not recommended beyond 2 or a maximum of 3 rounds of voting but if a consensus can still not be reached, the estimating and planning of an item may be postponed until additional information becomes available.
Playing Time
As mentioned, the Planning Poker session is held shortly after the compilation of the product backlog and may be spread over several days. User stories will then be identified and added throughout an iteration and hence most teams will conduct subsequent sessions at least once per iteration after a Daily Scrum. These sessions are best conducted several days prior to the end of an iteration as the whole team will still be together.
Time is also relevant when considering how long is spent in the session itself. In order to keep discussions productive, using a two or three-minute timer in the rounds definitely helps.
Playing for the First Time
If a team has no experience in the use of Planning Poker then the team members cannot draw on comparisons with past sessions in their estimating. The solution for first-time players is to establish a baseline and this can be done by getting them to discuss and identify two initial values for two different items. The values 2 and 5, or 3 and 8, are best for this since they represent items of lesser complexity and once identified, create a situation in which other items are more easily comparable. As an example in the latter case, if an item is considered harder than a 3 but easier than an 8 it would be estimated as a 5. This is clearly less accurate and more of a gamble than relative estimating for an experienced team but everyone has to start somewhere.
Holding a Royal Flush
The best hand you can hold in the card game poker is a Royal Flush; ace, king, queen, jack, ten, all of the same suit. If you ever get dealt that, you're a very lucky person. In Planning Poker being born lucky shouldn't be such a prerequisite but it is important to remember that estimation is to some extent still a well-educated guess. However, in order to get the best results there are certain things that can help you:
-Experience
Besides the situation where you need to establish a baseline, calling on knowledge and past experience is done by everyone in all walks of life when it comes to considering how long something is going to take and how complex it is likely to be. The same goes for Planning Poker, so your best weapon is the use of comparisons with historical data from previously finished work items. Starting with a blank sheet in each session is particularly wasteful since you already have relatives to set your estimations against. So, no new baseline is required if the team members developing a new system are mainly those who were part of previous ones and the new item has similarities to the old.
-Avoiding an anchor
Often, a manager who is voting will vote with a low number since one of his priorities is how quickly the work will be done. In a position of hierarchical power, this could eventually persuade the rest of the team to reduce their final estimate. This is known as 'anchoring', namely that his opinion pulls down the estimate because of its weight. Anchoring is also used in reference to cognitive bias and should be avoided at all costs. In other words, like sheep, we humans tend to follow a leader so if we know in advance that he or she is estimating a story as low as 3, we are likely to do the same.
-Adopting Online Poker
Just as with playing the gambling version of poker, you can now do Planning Poker online. For teams that are geographically distributed and thus have difficulty in getting together face to face, this is a significant solution. The whole process remains virtually the same and, in the way that those involved are not actually in the same room, may well lead to more objective and rational estimating results. Finding your preferred version of this online application is easy since there is such a wide range to choose between.
-Playing the Joker
Wouldn't it be great if you could play a joker in poker? Unfortunately, you can't, but in Planning Poker there is at least the 'Break' card which can be played. This is simply a card which a team member can show in round 4 drawing attention to the fact that he, she or everyone could do with a break. Maybe more time is needed to consider the story, maybe not enough information has been given to the estimators, maybe the planning session has gone on too long and minds aren't thinking too clearly or for whatever the reason, playing this card gives everyone a reinvigorating time-out.
It is also worth mentioning that there are two other cards available in the Planning Poker pack but not recommended if you want decisiveness; The 'Infinity' card and the '?' card. The former represents the fact that the estimator thinks that the task is too big, the latter that he has no idea how long it will take. Playing either of these two, and particularly the second, is akin to folding your hand in a poker card game.
To sum up, we can say that if the card game poker requires strategy, skill and gambling, Planning Poker needs the same and more. And one other thing is certain; if you play it right, it stands to make you far more money in the long term than any lucky combination of diamonds, hearts, spades or clubs that you'll ever hold in your hand.
Frequently asked questions
What is poker Planning in Agile methodology?
Poker planning is an estimation technique for agile teams that is used for calculating how much team resources should be allocated to complete a particular task from a product backlog. In planning poker every team member provides their own assessment of the task, and after a short discussion the team finds a consensus on the magnitude of the task. Tasks can be estimated in work hours, points, or any other unit.
Planning poker, or Scrum poker, is a very effective, collaborative planning tool that was first defined by James Grenning in 2002, and made popular by Mike Cohn, founder of Mountain Goat Software.
Each estimator takes a set of planning poker cards, consisting of a 0, ½, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 20, 40, 100 and optionally a ? for instances where you simply have no idea), and ‘play' progresses as follows, the rules are pretty simple:
- Read out the next task.
- Discuss the task: The task is discussed by those who understand what it's about, so that the whole team gains clarity about what they are being asked to estimate.
- Estimate: Everyone selects a card representing how big they think the task to be. Once everyone has selected, we reveal our score at the same time. This is to prevent other team members' estimates influencing your own.
- Lowest vs highest: If there is not universal consensus, ask whoever scored the lowest and highest why they thought this was.
- Re-estimate: Given these new insights everyone re-estimates.
- Gain consensus: Once consensus has been gained that score is recorded with the task to which it relates. This consensus can be done by repeatedly re-estimating, but more often in our team if most have scored, say 8, and one member still estimates a 5, then she may simply say that they are happy to go with the rest of the group.
Benefits
Relative
One of the immediate benefits of planning poker is that it allows you to estimate tasks relative to one another. You may not be in a position to know exactly how long something will take to do, but it should always be easier to estimate whether it would take more effort or less effort than a similar task that you have already completed and know how long it took.
Think of it this way, it doesn't really matter if you measure the length of your desk in metres and centimetres, feet and inches, or even Post-it notes and pencils, so long as everyone on your team is also using the same scale.
Some teams use an arbitrary unit called ‘story points' where they know the size of one story point, others measure in ideal days. We estimate in ideal hours. Tiki island slots online.
We also take into account how many people we anticipate will be working on the task. So if we think the task will take one hour with three developers then we'd score it as a three. Although it only occurred to me a couple of weeks ago that we also need to build in quality assurance/testing time into our estimates.
One general rule we have is that if a task is scored as a 13 or above then it needs to be broken down into smaller tasks. Large tasks are generally more complex and therefore harder to estimate with any degree of accuracy. Breaking down the task into smaller pieces removes some of this risk.
Equal voice
Another benefit is that this style of estimating gives everyone on the team an equal voice. I remember one of the first times we used planning poker when one particular task was discussed, it involved cleaning up a few directories in our media library. My colleague Steve and I estimated something small, like a 5 or 8. Duncan, who had only been in the job for about six weeks estimated 100.
Agile Poker Cards
Why so high, Duncan? Even though he was relatively inexperienced in terms of the job as a whole it turns out he had the most up-to-date experience of our media library, and he reported that it was a right royal mess. It would take a much longer time to sort out than either Steve or I had anticipated.
Equal contribution
Related is the feeling by the whole team that they have all contributed to the plan. And people often feel more committed to a plan that they have had input on. The result is a more dedicated, self-organising team.
Conclusion
We've found planning poker to be a very effective tool for estimating the relative size of project tasks. It allows the whole team to understand what work is coming up, and have their say on how simple or complex the tasks are.
It also allows us to chart the velocity of the team from sprint to sprint, which in turns helps us with future planning as it gives us a more accurate idea of how much work we are likely to complete from sprint to sprint.
More reading
Luis Goncalves, co-author of the excellent book Getting value out of Agile Retrospectives has written a really useful article about planning poker:
In Agile Methodology, one term that you will regularly come across is 'Planning Poker', but what is it exactly? Well, sadly, it's not organizing a game of stud poker with your workmates in your lunch break because the business you work for has just adopted Agile. As attractive as that may sound to some, Planning Poker is something different although with some similarities, hence the origin of its name and our freedom to indulge in a few analogies here. It still contains the three core elements of the famous card game, namely strategy, skill, and to a certain degree gambling, but where it differs most is that this is a team game, not an individual one.
The Creation of Planning Poker
Best online blackjack games. In one sentence perhaps Planning Poker could best be described as an estimation and planning technique which is based on team consensus and used primarily after a product backlog is written. The creation of the tool in 2002 is accredited to James Grenning who felt that the prevalent estimation approach at that time, known as Wideband Delphi, was both too time-consuming and had serious limitations in its involvement of the most suitable members of the entire team. Wideband Delphi had its roots in the 1950s and was still being used at the turn of the century along with other rather antiquated techniques.
The Poker Game and the Players
Planning Poker depends upon input from all the experts with their different fields of expertise who are actively involved in a project's story. From the product owner to customers, programmers, testers, database engineers and designers, all those relevant within the cross-functional team to what is going on and to what is envisaged. Estimation in any project, not least software development, is a major challenge needing careful thought and implementation and, as teams and projects increase in size, inadequate planning and incorrect estimations will usually prove disastrous. By involving more specialized and competent people in estimating the work effort required to implement the same project, estimates will undoubtedly be far more accurate. Similarly, if the whole team takes part, greater collaboration naturally ensues, whilst, at the same time, any problematic issues will be discovered earlier in the project.
The Rounds in the Game
- The product owner or customer reads an agile user story or describes a feature to those assigned the task of estimating.
- Those same estimators, namely the team members of the group, fully discuss the feature and, where needed, ask the product owner any relevant questions for greater clarification.
- Once this discussion is finished, each estimator selects one card with a numerical value equivalent to his or her estimate of the level of complexity of the story. The card is then placed face down on the table. The number on the card shows each person's individual estimation of the story points needed to complete, based on the natural Fibonacci Scale; 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21…, although slight variations to that scale or other units of measurement may be used.
- The cards are then turned over and shown simultaneously by the estimators. If this was poker the card game, it would be the moment when we're all on the edge of our seats watching the end of a Las Vegas casino film; an emotionless, granite-faced player finally turns over his cards to reveal his winning or losing hand. In Planning Poker it's not quite so dramatic and doesn't end there.
- Should the estimators all select the same number that obviously becomes the final estimate. However this is rare, so in most cases where all the estimators' numbers are relatively similar, those who have chosen the highest and lowest values explain the rationale behind their choice of number to the group and a consensus is reached. Having to justify their logical basis for estimation at this stage compensates for information which may have been missing from the rationale of others in the team.
- If the reasoning and explanations have finished and no consensus can been reached, the estimators repeat the process from round 3 and continue until an agreed number is found. It is unlikely that any equal split will be resolved that quickly so in these circumstances rounding up rather than rounding down takes place. For example, if there was an equal split in story points between 5 and 8 on the Fibonacci scale, a team would choose 8.
- Repetition of the process is not recommended beyond 2 or a maximum of 3 rounds of voting but if a consensus can still not be reached, the estimating and planning of an item may be postponed until additional information becomes available.
Playing Time
As mentioned, the Planning Poker session is held shortly after the compilation of the product backlog and may be spread over several days. User stories will then be identified and added throughout an iteration and hence most teams will conduct subsequent sessions at least once per iteration after a Daily Scrum. These sessions are best conducted several days prior to the end of an iteration as the whole team will still be together.
Time is also relevant when considering how long is spent in the session itself. In order to keep discussions productive, using a two or three-minute timer in the rounds definitely helps.
Playing for the First Time
If a team has no experience in the use of Planning Poker then the team members cannot draw on comparisons with past sessions in their estimating. The solution for first-time players is to establish a baseline and this can be done by getting them to discuss and identify two initial values for two different items. The values 2 and 5, or 3 and 8, are best for this since they represent items of lesser complexity and once identified, create a situation in which other items are more easily comparable. As an example in the latter case, if an item is considered harder than a 3 but easier than an 8 it would be estimated as a 5. This is clearly less accurate and more of a gamble than relative estimating for an experienced team but everyone has to start somewhere.
Holding a Royal Flush
The best hand you can hold in the card game poker is a Royal Flush; ace, king, queen, jack, ten, all of the same suit. If you ever get dealt that, you're a very lucky person. In Planning Poker being born lucky shouldn't be such a prerequisite but it is important to remember that estimation is to some extent still a well-educated guess. However, in order to get the best results there are certain things that can help you:
-Experience
Besides the situation where you need to establish a baseline, calling on knowledge and past experience is done by everyone in all walks of life when it comes to considering how long something is going to take and how complex it is likely to be. The same goes for Planning Poker, so your best weapon is the use of comparisons with historical data from previously finished work items. Starting with a blank sheet in each session is particularly wasteful since you already have relatives to set your estimations against. So, no new baseline is required if the team members developing a new system are mainly those who were part of previous ones and the new item has similarities to the old.
-Avoiding an anchor
Often, a manager who is voting will vote with a low number since one of his priorities is how quickly the work will be done. In a position of hierarchical power, this could eventually persuade the rest of the team to reduce their final estimate. This is known as 'anchoring', namely that his opinion pulls down the estimate because of its weight. Anchoring is also used in reference to cognitive bias and should be avoided at all costs. In other words, like sheep, we humans tend to follow a leader so if we know in advance that he or she is estimating a story as low as 3, we are likely to do the same.
-Adopting Online Poker
Just as with playing the gambling version of poker, you can now do Planning Poker online. For teams that are geographically distributed and thus have difficulty in getting together face to face, this is a significant solution. The whole process remains virtually the same and, in the way that those involved are not actually in the same room, may well lead to more objective and rational estimating results. Finding your preferred version of this online application is easy since there is such a wide range to choose between.
-Playing the Joker
Wouldn't it be great if you could play a joker in poker? Unfortunately, you can't, but in Planning Poker there is at least the 'Break' card which can be played. This is simply a card which a team member can show in round 4 drawing attention to the fact that he, she or everyone could do with a break. Maybe more time is needed to consider the story, maybe not enough information has been given to the estimators, maybe the planning session has gone on too long and minds aren't thinking too clearly or for whatever the reason, playing this card gives everyone a reinvigorating time-out.
It is also worth mentioning that there are two other cards available in the Planning Poker pack but not recommended if you want decisiveness; The 'Infinity' card and the '?' card. The former represents the fact that the estimator thinks that the task is too big, the latter that he has no idea how long it will take. Playing either of these two, and particularly the second, is akin to folding your hand in a poker card game.
To sum up, we can say that if the card game poker requires strategy, skill and gambling, Planning Poker needs the same and more. And one other thing is certain; if you play it right, it stands to make you far more money in the long term than any lucky combination of diamonds, hearts, spades or clubs that you'll ever hold in your hand.
Frequently asked questions
What is poker Planning in Agile methodology?
Poker planning is an estimation technique for agile teams that is used for calculating how much team resources should be allocated to complete a particular task from a product backlog. In planning poker every team member provides their own assessment of the task, and after a short discussion the team finds a consensus on the magnitude of the task. Tasks can be estimated in work hours, points, or any other unit.
Who participates in planning poker?
Scrum Master, Product owner and team members should participate in planning poker. Team members participate in an estimation of every task, offering their estimation and finding a consensus. Scrum Master's mission is to facilitate the whole section, making it transparent and true to the agile spirit. The product owner provides a necessary context to help the team make the estimation, but doesn't participate in estimation.
What is the Planning poker estimation technique used for?
Planning poker estimation technique allows team members to provide honest estimation of every task without being affected by the estimation of other team members. The whole technique facilitates equal feedback from every team member and allows everyone to present their perspective and insights to ensure that the task is being estimated across several dimensions of work.
Agile Planning Poker Free
Frequently asked questions
What is poker Planning in Agile methodology?
Poker Estimation In Agile
Poker planning is an estimation technique for agile teams that is used for calculating how much team resources should be allocated to complete a particular task from a product backlog. In planning poker every team member provides their own assessment of the task, and after a short discussion the team finds a consensus on the magnitude of the task. Tasks can be estimated in work hours, points, or any other unit.
Who participates in planning poker?
Scrum Master, Product owner and team members should participate in planning poker. Team members participate in an estimation of every task, offering their estimation and finding a consensus. Scrum Master's mission is to facilitate the whole section, making it transparent and true to the agile spirit. The product owner provides a necessary context to help the team make the estimation, but doesn't participate in estimation.
Planning Poker In Agile Methodology Framework
What is the Planning poker estimation technique used for?
Planning poker estimation technique allows team members to provide honest estimation of every task without being affected by the estimation of other team members. The whole technique facilitates equal feedback from every team member and allows everyone to present their perspective and insights to ensure that the task is being estimated across several dimensions of work.