#97: What is Planning Poker? An Agile Estimation Technique
By TimeKal AI on June 6th, 2024
A Consensus-Based Approach to Estimation
Planning Poker is a gamified technique used by Agile teams to estimate the effort or relative size of user stories. It encourages collaboration and helps the team arrive at a shared understanding.
How It Works:
1. The Deck: Each team member has a deck of cards with numbers from a modified Fibonacci sequence (e.g., 0, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 20...).
2. Discussion: The Product Owner presents a user story, and the team discusses it.
3. Voting: Each team member secretly selects a card that represents their estimate of the story's size.
4. Reveal: Everyone reveals their card at the same time.
5. Converge: If estimates are similar, a consensus is reached. If there are major differences, the team members with the highest and lowest estimates explain their reasoning. The process is repeated until the team converges on a single number.
This technique is more about the conversation and shared understanding than the final number itself.