WHAT IS POKER PLANNING ?

In agile project management, there is a very trendy technique and known worldwide, we call it: Poker Planning or Poker Scrum. Why ? we will know in this blog-post.

What is Poker Planning?

This technique, in agile project management, is used to estimate, but not to plan. Reliable and trustworthy, it was created in 2002 by James Grenning, but it became more popular thanks to Mike Cohn’s book “Agile Estimating and Planning”.

Planning Poker cards : deck of cards 

On a round table, each one of the team has a deck of cards. Each participant holds the same cards, their values are inspired by the Fibonacci series: 0, 1/2, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 20, 40, 100, ?, ∞.

The card with the ? is used when the participant can’t estimate the story, and the symbol ∞ is used when the participant thinks that the story is worth more than 100 points.

the difficulty of the numbers is ascending, per example 1 is too easy, but 13 is very hard, and so on. The numbers are called Points or Story Points.

This technique indorses exchanging between the team members, it allows them to express themselves easily and they can share ideas and difficulties without any struggles, mostly when the teams have people with different levels of experience and expertise. 

Poker Planning session : 

It’s simple. All the participants have a seat around a table, each one has his own deck of cards. According to the agile DSDM project management method, within the participants should be: a Business Analyst, a Team Leader, a Business Ambassador, Solution Developers, and Solution Testers. Here are the 5 steps of a Poker Planning session: 

1. Presenting the user story: the Product Owner and the Business Ambassador explain the user story to the team members; 
2. Q/A about the user story: in this step, they have to answer to different questions asked by the participants. They have to discuss the different ideas and clarify what is unclear; 
3. User story estimation by each member: the participants start evaluating the user story complexity, so they put on table their story points;
4. User story estimation by the team: it’s time to turning over all the cards, everyone and at the same time;
5. Story Points value: at the end, the team defines the value of the Poker session. The product owner by then prepares his product backlog and plans his sprints.

Online Poker Planning:

Now, it’s possible. Due to the coronavirus conditions, everything is online. So then, we can practice the Poker Planning online. There are many online tools to create a session and invite participants to join, and then to estimate. 

Here are some apps to practice the Poker Planning online:

• www.scrumpoker-online.org
• www.scrumpoker.online
• www.planningpoker.fr
• www.planitpoker.com
• www.planningpoker.com
• www.planningpokeronline.com

If you don’t or can’t practice via an online tool, we have a better idea. When you are in meeting with your team, each one of you can write his estimation in message, but you all send it at the same time. Do it again and again until you finish all the estimations.

The Poker Planning is one of the great agile project management practices. Have you tried it yet ?

Talk to us, our agile coaching experts can help you to develop your management skills. 

MORE YOU KNOW, MORE YOU GROW :

Reading more ? Check out other interesting topics !