Poker Planning Wiki
Welcome to Planning Poker for BlackBerry 10 About. Planning Poker is a BlackBerry 10 application featuring a clean, simple and Ad-free user interface for your agile planning sessions. Simply swipe between cards or pinch to pick one fast. Double tap to hide/unhide. Supports light and dark card theme. The application is released under the Apache. SCRUM Planning Poker is a web application written in C#, ASP.Net 2.0 and AJAX.Net that is great for SCRUM Planning Sessions. Our tool, Planning Poker®, is a fun, refreshing way to run through a list of user stories and assign effort points to them as a team. Over time, the team establishes a sprint velocity, or total number of effort points they can feasibly complete in one sprint, which helps determine how many stories a team can pull in during sprint planning.
Used when we have a lot of User Story to estimate, the Wall Planning Poker and a variant of Planning Poker card.
Introduction
Wall Planning Poker is a variation of Planning Poker Card that is used to estimate more macro projects. Beyond of a hundred User Story, the use of Planning Poker Card is too long.
Poker Planning Wikipedia
Proceeding
1 – Bring the team together
The first step will be to bring the project team together. All the people of the SCRUM Team and the Product Owner must be present.
2 – Put the cards “size” on the wall
At first, we will align on the wall the different cards giving the indication of the “size” of the User Story and represented by the numbers: it can be the number of tasks allowing to realize the User Story or the time in hours / day to realize them. The rule is to be identified at the beginning of the estimate by the Product Owner. Each representing a column.
As for the Planning Poker Card, the values of the cards used follow approximately the Fibonacci law : ?, 0, ½, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 20, 40, 100, ∞
We will pay attention to the necessary place. Given the number of cards, it is generally advisable to provide a square 4 to 5 m long and 2 to 3 m high..
3 – Identification of the standard User Story
To make a better estimate, the principle will be based on a comparison with standards. For each column, we will define a standard User Story that will become our basis of comparison for our estimates. We will identify it visually in a different way from the User Story cards (card surrounded by black in our example).
Attention, the standard must be positioned according to the 2 axes :
- In X : The “Size” of User Story
- In Y : The priority level of User Story. The priority can be evaluated according to various criteria such as the importance with respect to the customer, the development strategy (new technologies, competitive strengths …), value of the company, ROI or “I think this is more important than that but I do not really know why ».
4 – Distribution of User Story
The Product Owner will then distribute to each person or each team of people the set of cards with each of them a User Story. The Product Owner makes a short description if necessary.
5 – Estimate
All the people on the team or different teams then have a predefined time (about 30 minutes) to estimate the time they think necessary to achieve the User Story. For this, they will perform for each User Story map a comparison to the User Story Standard and position their map in the column that they think is most appropriate.
Throughout this estimate, the Product Owner is available to answer questions. He will recall, that this is an estimate and that it is not definitive. This can be reviewed at a later iteration.
6 – Validate a “value”
Once the time is up, each person or team will compare their estimate with that of others. The teams will be available to each other to justify their choice and exchange, and will move the cards if necessary. The final issue is that all cards distributed for the same User Story are in the same estimation column. This will be the value that will be used for planning.
Some important rules
The rules of operation are the same as for the Planning Poker Card.
Source
1 – M. Cohn (2005) – Agile estimating and planning
V. Messager Rota (2014) – Architecte Logiciel
The Planning Poker Card is a fun and consensual method for planning projects. Used extensively in SCRUMs, this tool can be used for any type of project.
The Planning Poker Card is a time estimation method developed by Mr. Cohn 1 who adapted it himself from the planning game used in the XP method. The objective is to estimate in a team the delays of realization of the projects.
The principle is rather simple : each person on the team will make an estimate. This estimate is then compared with the estimates of other people to retain only one value.
Proceeding
1 – Bring the team together
The first step will be to bring the project team together. All persons of the SCRUM Team as well as the Product Owner must be present.
It should be noted that for a good estimate, it is advisable to be at minimum 5 people.
2 – Distribute the cards
To each person, we will give a deck of cards, each with a value : 0, 1, 2, 3…
The values used follow approximately the Fibonacci law : ?, 0, ½, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 20, 40, 100, ∞.
3 – Presentation and exchange of the User Story
The Product Owner will present the User Story. The goal is for everyone to understand the subject and agree on the expected. The team will have to ask all the necessary questions so as not to leave shadow areas.
4 – Choose the theme of choice
The Planning Poker Card is used for two purposes :
- Or for set the number of tasks necessary to complete the Story. This is the case when a User Story is complex that we will cut into “Story Point”.
- Let identify the number of hours or days needed to complete a task. These are the Ideal Day quot which represent the completion time of each User Story or Story Point.
5 – Estimate
All the people on the team will make an estimate of the number of Story Points or Ideal Day by simultaneously presenting the card with the corresponding retained value..
The reflection period is of the order of 1 to 2 minutes.
6 – Validate a “value”
Always in a group, we will compare, analyze and discuss the proposed values to retain only one. The goal is to obtain consensus in a friendly and fast way, allowing everyone to express themselves and justify the choice of his figure :
- If all the estimates are convergent, then we will validate the result as is.
- If the estimates do not converge, the discussions will pick up particularly between the people with the biggest points differences.
Some important rules
Rule 1 : Have a similar knowledge of the subject
A poor estimate may be due to a lack of mastery of the subject, or the level of control too disparate. The fact that the Product Owner details the User Story can reduce the risk, but not eliminate it.
Thus, if the level of knowledge is too unevenly distributed, we will be able to :
- Either make pairs of people (a senior with a junior) to make the estimate.
- Either people choose the stories they want to estimate (with a minimum of 5 people per estimate) based on their level of knowledge.
Rule 2: Ensuring Exchange and Consensus
Another essential point is to ensure that everyone can express themselves freely while avoiding soft consensus. The moderator of the session will have to make sure of this and limit speaking time if necessary.
Planning Poker Wikipedia
Source
1 – M. Cohn (2005) – Agile estimating and planning
Poker Planning Wikihow
V. Messager Rota (2014) – Architecte Logiciel