Planning Poker Benefits

• Planning Poker® is Meant to Encourage Conversation and Shared Understanding. One of the main benefits of Planning Poker® is to enable members of the team that may have different skillsets to provide their perspective on the complexity of a particular story and identify gaps in understanding within the team. If someone points a story as a 1.
• Benefits of Planning Poker Estimation Planning poker combines three methods of estimation − Expert Opinion − In expert opinion-based estimation approach, an expert is asked how long something will take or how big it will be. The expert provides an estimate relying on his or her experience or intuition or gut feel.

1. Planning Poker Benefits Rules
2. Planning Poker Benefits Online
3. Planning Poker Benefits Plan
4. Planning Poker - Wikipedia
5. See Full List On Agilealliance.org

Planning Poker® is Meant to Encourage Conversation and Shared Understanding. One of the main benefits of Planning Poker® is to enable members of the team that may have different skillsets to provide their perspective on the complexity of a particular story and identify gaps in understanding within the team. If someone points a story as a 1. Planning Poker in a detailed case study, aiming to identify how the practical process of Planning Poker differs from the theory, and whether the expected benefits are seen or not, and why. The aim of this investigation is to provide a comprehensive conceptualization of Planning Poker. Planning poker works so well because it uses broader insight from a group of cross functional individuals to get an estimate. But group discussions can quickly become unwieldy and very lengthy so this entry focuses on what you as the ScrumMaster can do to keep the show on the road and moving at a quick pace.

Planning poker, also called Scrum poker, is a consensus-based, gamified technique for estimating, mostly used to estimate effort or relative size of development goals in software development. In planning poker, members of the group make estimates by playing numbered cards face-down to the table, instead of speaking them aloud. The cards are revealed, and the estimates are then discussed. By hiding the figures in this way, the group can avoid the cognitive bias of anchoring, where the first number spoken aloud sets a precedent for subsequent estimates.

Planning poker is a variation of the Wideband delphi method. It is most commonly used in agile software development, in particular in Scrum and Extreme Programming.

The method was first defined and named by James Grenning in 2002^[1] and later popularized by Mike Cohn in the book Agile Estimating and Planning,^[2] whose company trade marked the term ^[3] and a digital online tool.^[4]

Process[edit]

Rationale[edit]

Planning Poker Benefits Rules

The reason to use planning poker is to avoid the influence of the other participants. If a number is spoken, it can sound like a suggestion and influence the other participants' sizing. Planning poker should force people to think independently and propose their numbers simultaneously. This is accomplished by requiring that all participants show their card at the same time.

Equipment[edit]

Planning poker is based on a list of features to be delivered, several copies of a deck of cards and optionally, an egg timer that can be used to limit time spent in discussion of each item.

The feature list, often a list of user stories, describes some software that needs to be developed.

The cards in the deck have numbers on them. A typical deck has cards showing the Fibonacci sequence including a zero: 0, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89; other decks use similar progressions with a fixed ratio between each value such as 1, 2, 4, 8, etc.

The reason for using the Fibonacci sequence instead of simply doubling each subsequent value is because estimating a task as exactly double the effort as another task is misleadingly precise. A task which is about twice as much effort as a 5, has to be evaluated as either a bit less than double (8) or a bit more than double (13).

Several commercially available decks use the sequence: 0, ½, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 20, 40, 100, and optionally a ? (unsure), an infinity symbol (this task cannot be completed) and a coffee cup (I need a break, and I will make the rest of the team coffee). The reason for not exactly following the Fibonacci sequence after 13 is because someone once said to Mike Cohn 'You must be very certain to have estimated that task as 21 instead of 20.' Using numbers with only a single digit of precision (except for 13) indicates the uncertainty in the estimation. Some organizations^[which?] use standard playing cards of Ace, 2, 3, 5, 8 and king. Where king means: 'this item is too big or too complicated to estimate'. 'Throwing a king' ends discussion of the item for the current sprint.

Smartphones allow developers to use mobile apps instead of physical card decks. When teams are not in the same geographical locations, collaborative software can be used as replacement for physical cards.

Procedure[edit]

At the estimation meeting, each estimator is given one deck of the cards. All decks have identical sets of cards in them.

The meeting proceeds as follows:

• A Moderator, who will not play, chairs the meeting.
• The Product Owner provides a short overview of one user story to be estimated. The team is given an opportunity to ask questions and discuss to clarify assumptions and risks. A summary of the discussion is recorded, e.g. by the Moderator.
• Each individual lays a card face down representing their estimate for the story. Units used vary - they can be days duration, ideal days or story points. During discussion, numbers must not be mentioned at all in relation to feature size to avoid anchoring.
• Everyone calls their cards simultaneously by turning them over.
• People with high estimates and low estimates are given a soap box to offer their justification for their estimate and then discussion continues.
• Repeat the estimation process until a consensus is reached. The developer who was likely to own the deliverable has a large portion of the 'consensus vote', although the Moderator can negotiate the consensus.
• To ensure that discussion is structured; the Moderator or the Product Owner may at any point turn over the egg timer and when it runs out all discussion must cease and another round of poker is played. The structure in the conversation is re-introduced by the soap boxes.

The cards are numbered as they are to account for the fact that the longer an estimate is, the more uncertainty it contains. Thus, if a developer wants to play a 6 he is forced to reconsider and either work through that some of the perceived uncertainty does not exist and play a 5, or accept a conservative estimate accounting for the uncertainty and play an 8.

Benefits[edit]

A study by Moløkken-Østvold and Haugen^[5] reported that planning poker provided accurate estimates of programming task completion time, although estimates by any individual developer who entered a task into the task tracker was just as accurate. Tasks discussed during planning poker rounds took longer to complete than those not discussed and included more code deletions, suggesting that planning poker caused more attention to code quality. Planning poker was considered by the study participants to be effective at facilitating team coordination and discussion of implementation strategies.

See also[edit]

• Comparison of Scrum software, which generally has support for planning poker, either included or as an optional add-on.

References[edit]

1. ^'Wingman Software Planning Poker - The Original Paper'. wingman-sw.com. Retrieved 5 July 2017.
2. ^Mike Cohn (November 2005). 'Agile Estimating and Planning'. Mountain Goat Software. Retrieved 1 February 2008.
3. ^'Planning poker - Trademark, Service Mark #3473287'. Trademark Status & Document Retrieval (TSDR). 15 January 2008. Retrieved 26 May 2014.
4. ^Cohn, Mike. 'Planning Poker Cards: Effective Agile Planning and Estimation'. Mountain Goat Software. Mountain Goat Software. Retrieved 30 March 2016.
5. ^K Moløkken-Østvold, NC Haugen (10–13 April 2007). 'Combining Estimates with Planning Poker—An Empirical Study'. 18th Australian Software Engineering Conference. IEEE: 349–58. doi:10.1109/ASWEC.2007.15. ISBN978-0-7695-2778-9.

• Mike Cohn (2005). Agile Estimating and Planning (1 ed.). Prentice Hall PTR. ISBN978-0-13-147941-8.

A well-established best practice is that those who will do the work, should estimate the work, rather than having an entirely separate group estimate the work.

But when an agile team estimates product backlog items, the team doesn’t yet know who will work on each item. Teams will usually make that determination either during iteration (sprint) planning or in a more real-time manner in daily standups.

This means the whole team should take part in estimating every product backlog item. But how can someone with a skill not needed to deliver a product backlog item contribute to estimating it?

Before I can answer that, I need to briefly describe Planning Poker, which is the most common approach for estimating product backlog items. If you are already familiar with Planning Poker, you can skip the next section.

Planning Poker

Planning Poker is a consensus-based, collaborative estimating approach. It starts when a product owner or key stakeholder reads to the team an item to be estimated. Team members are then encouraged to ask questions and discuss the item so they understand the work being estimated.

Each team member is holding a set of poker-style playing cards on which are written the valid estimates to be used by the team. Any values are possible, but it is generally advisable to avoid being too precise. For example, estimating one item as 99 and another as 100 seems extremely difficult as a 1% increase in effort seems impossible to distinguish. Commonly used values are 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 20, 40, and 100 (a modified Fibonacci sequence) and 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, and 32 (a simple doubling of each prior value).

Once the team members are satisfied they understand the item to be estimated, each estimator selects a card reflecting their estimate. All of the estimators then reveal their cards at the same time. If all the cards show the same value, that becomes the team’s estimate of the work involved. If not, the estimators discuss their estimates with an emphasis on hearing from those with the highest and lowest values.

If you aren’t familiar with estimating product backlog items this way, you may want to read more about Planning Poker before continuing.

How Can Someone Participate Without the Needed Skills

Equipped with a common understanding of Planning Poker, let’s see how a team member can contribute to estimating work that they cannot possibly be involved in. As an example, consider a database engineer who is being asked to estimate a product backlog item that will include front-end JavaScript and some backend Ruby on Rails coding, and will then need to be tested.

How can this database engineer contribute to estimating this product backlog item?

There are three reasons why it’s possible--and desirable.

1. Planning Poker Isn’t Voting

When playing Planning Poker, participants are not voting on their preferred estimate. The team will not settle on the estimate that gets the most votes. Instead, each estimator is given the credibility they deserve. If one programmer wrote the original code that needs to be modified and happened to be in that same code a couple of days ago, the team should give more credence to that programmer’s estimate than to the estimate of a programmer who has never been in this part of the system.

This means that each team member can estimate, but that the team will weigh more heavily the opinions of those more closely aligned with the work.

2. Estimates Are Relative and That’s Easier

In Planning Poker, the estimates created should be relative rather than absolute estimates. That is, a team will say things like, “This item will take twice as long as the other item, but we can’t estimate the actual number of hours for either item.”

For example, this blog post contains one illustration. I provided my artist with a short description of what I had in mind for an image and he created the illustration. Most of my blog posts have one title illustration. Even though I have no artistic skill, I could estimate the work to create those illustrations as about equal each week.

Sure, some illustrations are more involved, and others can reuse a few elements from a past illustration. But most are close enough that I could estimate them as taking the same effort.

But some blog posts have two images. Even though I have no design skills at all, I’m willing to say that creating two images will take about twice as long as creating one image.

So a tester is not being asked to estimate how many hours it will take a programmer to code something. Instead the tester is estimating coding that thing relative to other things.

That can still be hard but relative estimates are easier than absolute estimates. And remember that because of point one above, the person whose skills may not be needed on the story will not be given as much credibility as someone whose skills will be used.

Planning Poker Benefits Online

3. Everyone Contributes, Even If They Don’t Estimate

I want everyone on the team to participate in an estimating meeting. But that does not mean everyone estimates every item.

Despite relative estimating being easier than absolute estimating, there will still be times when someone will not be able to estimate a particular product backlog item. This might be because the person’s skills aren’t needed on that item. But that person may still be able to contribute to the discussion.

Sometimes the person whose skills are not needed on a given product backlog item will be the most astute in asking questions about the item, uncovering overlooked assumptions, or in seeing work that others on the team have missed.

For example, a database developer whose skills are not needed to deliver a product backlog item may be the one who remembers that:

The team promised to clean up that code the next time they were in it

There is an impact on reports that no one has considered

That when the team did a similar story a year ago it took much longer than anyone anticipated

and so on. The database developer may know these things or ask these questions even if unable to personally estimate their impact on the work.

A Few Examples

To provide a few examples, let’s return to role of a database engineer in estimating a product backlog item that has no database work. Here are some examples of things that team member might say that would add value to estimating that product backlog item:

• “I’m holding up this high estimate because this sounded like a lot of effort to code. It sounded like about twice as much as this other backlog item.”
  In this case, the database engineer is making a relative assessment of effort. This will presumably be based on things said by coders. In some cases, the database engineer may be wrong in that assessment. But that doesn’t mean the person’s opinion is always without merit. The database engineer’s opinion should be given the merit it deserves (which may be great or little).


• “Are you sure it’s that much work? I thought two sprints ago, you programmers were going to refactor that part of the system. If that happened, isn’t this easier now?”
  Here the database engineer is bringing up information that others may not have recalled or considered. It may or may not be of value. But sometimes it will be.


• “Are you sure it’s not more work than that? Have you considered the need to do this and that?”
  In this case, the database engineer is pointing out work that the others may have overlooked. If that work is significant, it should be reflected in the estimate.

When Everyone Participates, It Increases Buy In

Planning Poker Benefits Plan

There’s one final reason why I suggest the whole team participate when estimating product backlog items, especially with a technique such as Planning Poker: Doing so increases the buy in felt by all team members to the estimates.

When someone else estimates something for you or me, we don’t feel invested in that estimate. It may or may not be a good estimate. But if it’s not, that’s not our fault. We will do much more to meet an estimate we gave than one handed to us.

Planning Poker - Wikipedia

We want everyone on a team to participate in estimating that team’s work. You never know in advance who will ask the insightful questions about a product backlog item. Sometimes it’s one of the team members who will work on that item. But other times those questions come from someone whose skills are not needed on that item.

So while not every team member needs to provide an estimate for each item, every team member does need to participate in the discussion surrounding every estimate. Teams do best when the whole team works together for the good of the product, from estimation through to delivery.

What Has Your Experience Been?

See Full List On Agilealliance.org

What has your experience been with involving the whole team in estimating product backlog items? Have you found it beneficial to have everyone participate even though not everyone has skills needed on each item?