Planning Poker

Definition of Planning Poker:

Planning Poker or Estimation Poker is a team building exercise used for gaining group consensus about the estimation of the planned workload.

Use of Planning Poker:

Players use “Poker” cards with numbers from the Fibonacci sequence on them to assign story points to user stories in order to estimate workload. The team must reach consensus on how much effort will go into the completion of user stories or requirements. Alternatively, teams can use other forms of relative estimation, such as t-shirt sizing.

Benefits of Planning Poker:

  • Provides benefit of collective team knowledge and experience.
  • Promotes brainstorming and generation of ideas.
  • Helps with problem solving.
  • Increases team collaboration.
  • Improves accuracy of estimates.

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Author

Photo of Sohrab Salimi

Sohrab Salimi

Scrum Academy GmbH

Sohrab is a long-standing Certified Scrum Trainer (CST) and CEO of the Scrum Academy GmbH based in Cologne. He is a trained medical doctor and worked for Bain & Company as a consultant and as a CIO at SE-Consulting, among others, before founding the Scrum Academy. As a consultant and trainer, he has been supporting companies from a wide range of industries for over a decade on topics related to agile transformation, innovation and organizational development.

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