Is Planning Poker Done During Sprint Planning?

Planning poker is a tool used by scrum teams to estimate the effort required to complete a user story. It is a variant of the Wideband Delphi method.

The technique was first described by James Grenning in 2002.

Planning poker is usually played with a standard deck of cards. Each card has a value from 1 to 13, with the ace representing 1/2 a point.

The joker card is worth 0 points. The person leading the planning session (usually the scrum master) shuffles the deck and deals one card to each player face down. .

Once all players have their card, they all turn them over at the same time and hold them up for all to see. The player who has the Lowest value card is the first to speak, and says how many points they think the user story is worth.

The next Lowest value card then speaks, and so on until all players have spoken.

PRO TIP:Planning poker is a great tool to use during sprint planning: it helps to create team consensus on the estimated effort needed for a given task. Not only does it encourage conversation and collaboration between team members, but it also ensures that everyone has a common understanding of the task at hand. It’s important to remember that planning poker should be used as an estimation tool, not as a decision-making one – so be sure to allocate enough time in your sprint planning meetings for discussion and decisions.

If there is unanimous agreement on the estimation (e.g. everyone has an 8), then that is the estimate and no further discussion is needed.

If there is disagreement, then discussion ensues until a consensus is reached, or an agreement made to re-estimate after more information has been gathered.

Planning poker should not be confused with planning fallacies, which are common mistakes made when estimating projects that can lead to unrealistic expectations and schedules.

Planning poker is a popular estimation technique for agile teams, but it does have its drawbacks. One of the main criticisms is that it can lead to anchoring bias, where estimates are unduly influenced by the first number spoken.

Another issue is that it can be difficult to reach consensus when team members have different understandings of what constitutes an easy, medium or hard task.

Despite its flAWS, planning poker can be a useful tool for helping scrum teams come to agreement on the relative size of user stories. It forces team members to justify their estimates and encourages debate which can lead to a more accurate final estimate.