Back

Planning Games in Scrum

The most common Agile planning/estimation process uses the “Planning Poker” technique; this exercise is designed to provide an insight into an alternative planning approach referred to the “Team Estimation Game”; this exercise was seeded by a presentation made by Steve Bockman.

Planning poker technique is a variation of the Wideband Delphi approach and it is mostly used in agile software development, in particular in Scrum and Extreme Programming. The approach was first defined by James Grenning in 2002 and popularized by Mike Cohn in the book Agile Estimating and Planning.

Planning poker is a gamified technique for estimation. The product owner or customer reads an agile user story or describes a feature to the estimators in order to start a poker planning session. The estimates are made by playing numbered cards face-down to the table and not saying them aloud. The estimates are discussed only when the cards are revealed. If all estimators selected the same value, that becomes the estimate, if not, the estimators discuss their estimates. After the discussion, each estimator reselects an estimate card, and all cards are revealed at the same time. The poker planning process is repeated until consensus is achieved.

Recommended Further Reading

The following materials may assist you in order to get the most out of this course:

Translate »