Scrum Planning Poker Numbers

Planning Poker (also known as Scrum Poker) is a very popular technique proposed in 2002 by James Grenning.Each player uses a set of cards with Fibonacci sequence numbers on it to estimate the overall effort of a task in Story Points. Scrum Planning Poker is a simple application which provides you with a digital deck of cards to use during SCRUM planning meetings when estimating. Supports Windows 10 PC, Mobile and Xbox One. Uwp scrum scrum-poker scrum-planning-poker scrum-planning-meetings.

• Scrum Poker Planning Cards
• Scrum Planning Poker Numbers And Meanings

Story points and velocity are probably the most well known tools for estimation in Agile environments. They are the basis for predictability with Scrum. To begin with, we should be clear on what a story point is. Most people reading this will have heard at least one definition, and probably more than one. I'm going to go with the king of planning poker, Mike Cohn.

Mike defines story points in the following way :

The numbers used to vote when planning are 0, 0.5, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 20, 40, 100. Is there a meaning when those numbers are chosen? Why don't we just choose 1,2,3,4. For the sake of simpliness?

'They are a unit of measure for expressing the overall size of a user story or feature. They tell us how big a story is, relative to others, either in terms of size or complexity'

With that understanding, let's set the scene. We are in our sprint planning meeting. The Development Team (DT) are sat alongside the Product Owner (PO) who has bought along their prioritised product backlog, and the Scrum Master (SM) is about to kick the session off by defining the desired outcome of the meeting. The desired outcome of the sprint planning meeting may be as follows:

During sprint planning in SCRUM, poker-like cards are used as a unit of measure for estimating the 'size' of a task. The points assigned to the task will help the team estimate how long it will take to complete each task: how difficult it is likely to be, and what will be included in the next sprint, based on this estimation. Scrumpoker online is an open source web implementation of planning poker for scrum teams to determine the complexity of stories. It aims to integrate ticketing systems like Redmine, Github and Gitlab.

• There is an agreed sprint backlog
• The DT have reached a consensus on the size and complexity of each story in the sprint backlog (in story points)
• The DT and the PO have a shared understanding of each story in the sprint backlog
• The SM has ensured that the team have not planned too much work by checking the story points planned against a known velocity

As the session goes on, the product owner will talk through each story on the the product backlog. The team will ask questions of the PO and of each other in order to gain a shared understanding of the story. Once they think they have this, the SM will provide them with planning poker cards and the act of sizing will begin.

The DT will be a group made up of people with different levels of experience, knowledge and skill. Sizing with planning poker helps to ensure that everyone's voice is heard, and that all opinions are taken into account, not just those of the team lead or architect. In this way it may be possible for anyone in the DT to pick up any story during the sprint.

To begin, the DT find a benchmark to relatively size each new story against. In sprint one, the SM may ask them to find an average size story on the product backlog. In later sprints, perhaps more appropriately, they may look back at stories already completed and find one with a size they now know to be accurate.

The SM will ask the DT to decide individually the size of the story being discussed, and the DT will hold up the card representing that number of story points. They will do so simultaneously so as not to be influenced by any other member of the team. If the DT don't have consensus on the size of the story, further important discussion will ensue, facilitated by the SM. It may require another round or two of poker, but eventually consensus will be reached on size as members of the DT persuade each other with constructive reasoning.

This process will be repeated with the next story on the product backlog, and then the next, and so on until the DT believe they have enough work to fill the sprint. Now the SM will check to see how many story points have been planned. If this is the first sprint the DT have undertaken they will probably agree to start with what they have. If not, the SM will compare the number of points planned against team velocity.

What is our team velocity?

Velocity = total story points / no. of sprints

For example

Last 5 sprints completed points were:

30, 40, 50, 60, 70 = 250 points / 5 sprints = velocity of 50 points

Now that we have our velocity, we may want to turn that into a time estimate.

How big is my project?

Total estimate (points) / velocity = number of sprints

e.g. 500 story points for project / 50 points = 10 sprints

How long will it take?

Number of sprints x length of sprint (weeks)

e.g. 2 weeks sprints = 10 sprints x 2 weeks = 20 weeks

Of course, this still requires you to have broken down the entire project into stories and to have sized all of them. This is a significant up front task.

The alternative is to try and keep projects relatively small, and to plan at a number of different levels. At a project level, use ranges for the length of the project leaving more granular estimates for each sprint as you plan them. Perhaps you can break a project into rough sprint blocks (i.e. this section of the project is 1-3 sprints) and use this to calculate your range. Ensure that you provide your project estimate with a level of confidence attached. As you learn more from the granular process and as you complete work, you can begin to narrow the range for the overall project estimate and provide a greater level of confidence.

Photo credit (homepage): Mountain Goat Softare

Effective estimation is one of the toughest challenges software developers face in their jobs. Regardless of team size, they need to define, estimate, and distribute work throughout a team. As teams get larger, it becomes even more important to build good habits around planning and estimating work. Lack of planning and estimating reduce confidence in a program, breaks down relationships between the team and the business, and makes development harder on everyone.

Best Scrum Software Every Project Needs

A powerful scrum software that supports scrum project management. It features scrum tools like user story map, product backlog management, sprint backlog management, task management, daily scrum meeting, sprint planning tool, sprint review tool, sprint retrospective tool, burndown, impediment, stakeholder and team management.

The DT will be a group made up of people with different levels of experience, knowledge and skill. Sizing with planning poker helps to ensure that everyone's voice is heard, and that all opinions are taken into account, not just those of the team lead or architect. In this way it may be possible for anyone in the DT to pick up any story during the sprint.

To begin, the DT find a benchmark to relatively size each new story against. In sprint one, the SM may ask them to find an average size story on the product backlog. In later sprints, perhaps more appropriately, they may look back at stories already completed and find one with a size they now know to be accurate.

The SM will ask the DT to decide individually the size of the story being discussed, and the DT will hold up the card representing that number of story points. They will do so simultaneously so as not to be influenced by any other member of the team. If the DT don't have consensus on the size of the story, further important discussion will ensue, facilitated by the SM. It may require another round or two of poker, but eventually consensus will be reached on size as members of the DT persuade each other with constructive reasoning.

This process will be repeated with the next story on the product backlog, and then the next, and so on until the DT believe they have enough work to fill the sprint. Now the SM will check to see how many story points have been planned. If this is the first sprint the DT have undertaken they will probably agree to start with what they have. If not, the SM will compare the number of points planned against team velocity.

What is our team velocity?

Velocity = total story points / no. of sprints

For example

Last 5 sprints completed points were:

30, 40, 50, 60, 70 = 250 points / 5 sprints = velocity of 50 points

Now that we have our velocity, we may want to turn that into a time estimate.

How big is my project?

Total estimate (points) / velocity = number of sprints

e.g. 500 story points for project / 50 points = 10 sprints

How long will it take?

Number of sprints x length of sprint (weeks)

e.g. 2 weeks sprints = 10 sprints x 2 weeks = 20 weeks

Of course, this still requires you to have broken down the entire project into stories and to have sized all of them. This is a significant up front task.

The alternative is to try and keep projects relatively small, and to plan at a number of different levels. At a project level, use ranges for the length of the project leaving more granular estimates for each sprint as you plan them. Perhaps you can break a project into rough sprint blocks (i.e. this section of the project is 1-3 sprints) and use this to calculate your range. Ensure that you provide your project estimate with a level of confidence attached. As you learn more from the granular process and as you complete work, you can begin to narrow the range for the overall project estimate and provide a greater level of confidence.

Photo credit (homepage): Mountain Goat Softare

Effective estimation is one of the toughest challenges software developers face in their jobs. Regardless of team size, they need to define, estimate, and distribute work throughout a team. As teams get larger, it becomes even more important to build good habits around planning and estimating work. Lack of planning and estimating reduce confidence in a program, breaks down relationships between the team and the business, and makes development harder on everyone.

Best Scrum Software Every Project Needs

A powerful scrum software that supports scrum project management. It features scrum tools like user story map, product backlog management, sprint backlog management, task management, daily scrum meeting, sprint planning tool, sprint review tool, sprint retrospective tool, burndown, impediment, stakeholder and team management.

The Accuracy of Group vs. Individual Estimation

According to some study on the accuracy of estimation of effort between individual and group in an experiment for a software project. 20 software professionals from the same company individually estimated the work effort required to implement the same software development project. The participants had different background and roles and the software project had previously been implemented. After that, they formed five groups. Each group agreed on one estimation by discussing and combining of the knowledge among them.

Result – The estimates based on group discussions were more accurate than the individual estimates.

What is Planning Poker?

Planning poker (also known as Scrum poker) is a consensus-based, gamified technique for estimating, mostly used to estimate effort or relative size of development goals in software development.

Steps for Planning Poker

1. To start a poker planning session, the product owner or customer reads an agile user story or describes a feature to the estimators.
   For example:
   'Customer logs in to the reservation system'
   'Customer enters search criteria for a hotel reservation'
2. Team members of the group make estimates by playing numbered cards face-down to the table without revealing their estimate (Fibonacci values: 1,2,3,5,8,13,20,40)
3. Cards are simultaneously displayed
4. The estimates are then discussed and high and low estimates are explained
5. Repeat as needed until estimates converge

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.

Agile Estimation – Relative vs Absolute

An estimate is nothing more than a well educated guess. We use all the knowledge and experience at hand to make a guess about the amount of time it is going to take. So instead of looking at every new work item separately, why not compare it to previously finished work items? It's easier for humans to relate to similar items than to guess the actual size of things anyway.

For example, is it closer to this really small thing? Or is it more like this normal sized item? Or is it really huge like that one piece of work we finished last month? Doing relative estimates will not only reduce the amount of time spent on estimating work, it will also heavily increase the accuracy of the estimates.

Our brain is not capable of doing absolute estimates; we always put that new thing that we need to estimate in relationship to things we already know.

Poker Face synonyms. Top synonyms for poker face (other words for poker face) are straight face, pokerface and wooden face. Words that mean poker face meaning. Synonyms for poker face include deadpan, deadpan expression, impassivity, inscrutability, mask, seriousness, straight face, impassiveness, serious expression and countenance. Find more similar words at wordhippo.com!

Fibonacci sequence and Planning Poker

Scrum Poker Planning Cards

Planning Poker uses of the Fibonacci sequence to assign a point value to a feature or user story. The Fibonacci sequence is a mathematical series of numbers that was introduced in the 13th century and used to explain certain formative aspects of nature, such as the branching of trees. The series is generated by adding the two previous numbers together to get the next value in the sequence: 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, and so on.

For agile estimation purposes, some of the numbers have been changed, resulting in the following series: 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 20, 40, 100 as shown in the Figure below:

The Interpretation of the point assigned to a poker card is listed in the table below:

Point vs Hour Value in Estimation

Scrum Planning Poker Numbers And Meanings

So why use story points instead of time values? Story pointing allows the team to focus on the complexity and time involved in delivering a piece of work. The team compares the new work against work they've already done. They compare the complexity of the new assignment against past challenges and rank the difficulty as well as the time required.

For example, we don't often account for 'the cost of doing business.' Meetings, email, code reviews, etc. with time values. But in reality, all these are necessary practices throughout in our daily life, but don't actually count as 'work.' Story points isolate the software development work from the associated logistic work items, so estimates using point based should more consistent than hour base approach.