There are different techniques in the world of agile management of projects. One most usual method is Online Planning Poker, also known as Scrum Poker.
There are benefits and drawbacks to Planning Poker online. One of the greatest advantages is that each team member can tell their estimates which kind of encourages discussion and collaboration between people. It also makes the team members feel more committed to the plan of the project.
Benefits of Scrum Poker
Different Projects have their own good reasons to use this tool but here are the benefits observed by us in general:
Keeps everyone occupied
The best part of this estimation technique is that everyone needs to have their own reasons to explain why their estimation is correct. Every player needs to think about all the aspects of the testing efforts to prove their estimate is correct.
Team Ownership
As the entire team discussed properly and decided on an estimate for a story, they take the responsibility to complete that work within the efforts estimated. This approach makes the team own their project and keeps them involved from the start.
Fast and Accurate
When the entire team with different roles is available for the estimation, you can get an accurate estimation quickly. Accuracy in estimation saves up a lot of time and surprises in achieving your goals in every specific project.
Loop of Feedback
When players reveal their estimates, they have to discuss why their estimates are high or low. This discussion can get down to questions on the implementation and requirement, which is a nice feedback loop to decrease the conversation gaps.
Fun and Productive
Who wouldn’t want to play poker at work? When you combine work and play, it makes people get involved more and gives the best results.
New Ideas
With the entire team available in the room, you can expect different estimates from people based on their idea for solutions. Out-of-the-box thinkers can provide you with a better solution at the lowest estimates.
Relative
One of the best benefits of planning poker is that it helps you estimate tasks relative to one another. You may not want to know the accurate time length of every project but it should always be convenient to estimate whether it would take more or less effort than a task similar to it that you have already done before and know the amount of time it took.
Think of it as it doesn’t really matter if you check the length of your desk in meter scale in every unit or even in post-it notes and pencils, so long as each person on your team will be using the same scale.
We also take notes of how many people we reach out to will be working on the project. So if we think the project will take two hours with six developers then we’d score it as a three. Also, we need to build quality testing time into our estimates as well.
Everyone has their own Voice
The planning poker technique encourages every player not to accept each other’s opinions, instead, everyone has to make and present their own estimations. New workers in the team can learn a variety of aspects of the specific project very easily and fast during these poker sessions.
Keeps everyone engaged
Planning Poker is a great engaging activity where every member has to contribute actively by giving their inputs and answering the questions.
Improves communication
Quiet people or introverts get equal say during these sessions to speak which helps them to open up. Quiet people may have better ideas and when they present their estimate, they get the entire attention of the team to talk about their point of view.
Common Understanding
As the entire team is involved in the process of estimation, every team member has a deep understanding of the expectations of user stories. Even though stories are chosen by different team members, the rest of them have a good understanding of what everyone else is doing. This is beneficial to come up with a better solution.
Better Collaboration
Planning poker sessions gathers everyone and makes people interact with each other and in a sense works as a team-building activity as well. When people know each other, they can collaborate easily to achieve their required goals.
How our application Chpokify helps with Planning Poker?
We at Chpokify have many opportunities for you. After you’re done signing up, we give you and your teammates a space for everything related to Planning Poker. You just have to create your stories and your estimates. If you want extra space for new projects, we at Chpokify provide you with that as well.
Conclusion
We have found planning poker to be really convenient for estimating the size of project tasks. It helps the whole team to know what work is coming up and have their voice on how complex or simple each task is.
It also allows you to chart the velocity of each team from sprint to sprint, which helps you with future planning as it gives you a better idea of how much work you are able to complete from sprint to sprint.
