Planning Poker

An introduction the the agile estimation practice of Planning Poker

1. Planning Poker Associate Professor David Parsons Massey University David Parsons - Massey University

2. First developed by James Grenning “ How to avoid analysis paralysis while release planning ” The aim of Planning Poker is to create estimates in a short time and involve the whole team Planning Poker David Parsons - Massey University

3. Like the Planning Game, Planning Poker is not really a game S imply a way of using game-like activities to perform some of the tasks of agile planning One significant difference is that in Planning Poker there are additional ‘pieces’ – the ‘cards’ used to estimate stories Game-like activity using Cards David Parsons - Massey University

4. The customer reads a story There is a discussion clarifying the story as necessary Each programmer selects their chosen estimate card (Or writes their estimate on a note card, if no pre-printed pack is available) No discussion of estimates takes place at this stage Once all programmers have written their estimate, all the cards are turned over Basic Process - Estimation David Parsons - Massey University

5. If there is agreement, no discussion is necessary The estimate is recorded and we move on to the next story. If there is disagreement in the estimates, the team can try to get a consensus If there is no consensus, it doesn’t matter It is only one story out of many It can be deferred, split, or the lowest estimate can be taken Basic Process - Discussion David Parsons - Massey University

6. E veryone in the team participates T hey have to make an estimate E veryone gains experience Discussions are automatically triggered by the more problematic estimates Where estimates are straightforward, the game enables consensus without unnecessary discussion Everyone Estimates David Parsons - Massey University

7. S ave time of manually writing estimates C ards also only have a subset of possible estimated days James Grenning’s set: 1 , 2, 3, 5, 7, 10 days and infinity A s the estimates get longer, the precision goes down Pre-Printed Cards David Parsons - Massey University

8. Maximum story size is under 2 weeks if you estimate that a story is longer than 2 weeks, play the infinity card and make the customer split the story The Infinity Card David Parsons - Massey University

9. Mountain Goat Software , 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 20, 40, and 100 online version also includes a .5 card The ‘zero’ value might look odd but it does not mean it takes no time at all, rather that is closer to 0 than 1 Mike Cohn 1 , 2, 3, 5, and 8 (Fibonacci sequence) or 1, 2, 4, and 8 O ther Card Sets David Parsons - Massey University

10. As well as the estimation number cards, some packs have additional cards ‘don’t know ’ ‘ discuss ’ ‘ coffee time’ etc . You can make up cards that you find useful in your own processes   Additional Cards David Parsons - Massey University

11. 0, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 20, 40 (in 4 ‘suits’) + ‘fast forward’, ‘rewind’ and ‘talk’ The ‘ Agical ’ card set David Parsons - Massey University

12. One suggestion for maintaining the speed of the process is to use a 2-minute egg timer for each discussion This may be turned over once more for more problematic estimates but then the next story should be estimated Speeding the Process David Parsons - Massey University

13. With large teams, where there are many stories to estimate, Planning Poker can be played separately by smaller teams However they will need to have done some estimating as a whole team first, covering 10 to 20 stories This ensures that everyone is familiar with the technique Also ensures that subsequent estimates are consistent between groups Large Teams David Parsons - Massey University

14. A minor variation on Planning Poker is to use poker chips instead of estimation cards, 1 chip for each story point P ossible to use different coloured chips to indicate different estimation contexts “ we had three team sizes we were considering for the release and we used white, blue and red chips to indicate the base story points and two levels of increment” Yip, J. (2007) Variations – Poker Chips David Parsons - Massey University

15. Another variation is to use an on-line version for distributed teams You can also download versions for mobile phones Variations – Online p lanningpoker.com David Parsons - Massey University

16. Moløkken-Østvold and Haugen (2007) identified some measurable and potential benefits Haugen (2006) claimed that it improved estimation in most cases, but that it increased estimation error in the extreme cases Empirical Evidence David Parsons - Massey University

17. Cohn, M. (2005). Agile Estimating and Planning , Addison-Wesley Grenning , J. (2002). Planning Poker or How to avoid analysis paralysis while release planning https ://sewiki.iai.uni-bonn.de/_ media/teaching/labs/xp/2005a/doc.planningpoker-v1.pdf Haugen, N. (2006). An Empirical Study of Using Planning Poker for User Story Estimation, AGILE 2006 , 23-34 Moløkken-Østvold , K. & Haugen, N. (2007). Combining Estimates with Planning Poker – An Empirical Study, 18th Australian Software Engineering Conference ( ASWEC 2007) , 349–358 Yip, J. (2007). Hands-on release planning with poker chips. 14th Conference on Pattern Languages of Programs (PLOP 2007 ) References David Parsons - Massey University