Why Planning Poker Works?

Let’s face it? Planning Poker is a one fun game and it can really become your best pastime. It’s fun, it’s exciting and most importantly there are so many different types of it that you can choose from. To become a pro in planning poker, you should know about the planning poker technique and how it works. If this is the first time you are hearing about this technique then stick with us a little longer because today we are going to talk about planning poker in detail.

What Is Planning Poker?

Planning poker is a scrum that helps bring together several expert opinions on the agile estimation of a particular project. In such agile planning, everyone’s included. From the database engineers to testers and programmers, they are all a part of it. As these people are well aware of how the software works, they are best suited for the estimation task than anyone else.

How Does Planning Poker Work?

When the agile planning exercise starts, every estimator is provided with a deck of planning poker cards. Every card comes with a valid estimation on it. It can be anything from 1,2,3,5,18,20,40,100 or any other number. To estimate the story or theme of each user, the moderator reads out the description to them. If the estimators have any questions, they can easily ask the moderator/owner and he has to reply to those questions accordingly. However, the main goal of planning poker isn’t just to come up with an estimate that can withstand scrutiny in the future. In fact, it’s all about coming up with a valid estimate that can come without costing too much.

After the discussion, each and every estimator privately selects the planning poker card. The particular card he selects represents the agile estimation. After choosing the cards, all the estimators have to turn over their cards and then show them to one another so that everyone knows about the estimation of each other.

It’s completely normal that your estimates differ. The ones with the highest and the lowest estimates have to explain their point of view in order for the other team members to know where they are coming from. During the agile planning session, the moderator has to take down notes so that he has all the information required when the story is being tested and programmed.

After the discussion is completed, the estimators have to re-estimate the values by selecting different cards. It often happens that the estimate converges by the second round. If that doesn’t happen then you need to keep repeating the process again and again until everyone agrees on one estimate that’s to be used for the story. Usually, it takes around 3 rounds at max to reach the final estimation goal.

Some Useful Tips For Planning Poker In Scrum

You’ll obviously come across some challenges during planning poker but with these tips, everything will fall into place;

1-Make sure that the discussions are productive

One of the best tips to use is to buy a sand-timer. Every time the discussion is about to start you can turn the sand timer and discuss till the sand runs out. This way, all of your team members will be able to learn how to be productive with the discussion and you’ll also get to start the next round right faster.

2-Break the game into small sessions

If you want you can play planning poker with a subset of the team. It’s not recommended but if you have several stories to estimate, you sure can use this tip and make the game easier for yourself.

3-Make Sure That The Time Is Right

You’ll have to play planning poker on two different occasions so it’s better to start early in the day instead of waiting for the night.

Play Planning Poker Online With Chpokify

Now that you know what planning poker is and how it works, it’ll be easier for you to play with your team. If you want to make the most out of the game then try chpokify.com.

Playing planning poker with Chpokify is quite easy and to get started with it, you just have to follow a few simple steps;

1-Register yourself to get your own space

2-Invite your team members

3-Start the session and create stories

4-Vote and Moderate

5-Finalize and Analyze

The best part about this platform is that it’s free for people who are only a team of 5. If you are 5 people who want to play planning poker, you can use Chpokify for free but if you are a bigger team with more members then you’ll have to pay a very small fee for it.

Conclusion

Planning poker in scrum can be the best thing you can do to make the most out of your free time. This estimation technique is exciting and fun so don’t wait for any further and try it right away!