Planning poker

Planning poker cards, originally uploaded by tlaukkanen.

After a recent course on agile development I learnt how to play the game of planning poker. Since being back at the office I have used it in a couple of product planning sessions and found it to be really useful.

The principal of the game is that in any group of people you will have difference of opinion as to how important a new product feature is or how complex it might be to build. This is where poker comes in to help you gain consensus during estimation.

Each player takes a set of cards with a series of numbers on it (based on fibonacci). The person taking the meeting would then read out the summary of the new product feature that is being suggested. Maybe in the form of a user story.

Each member of the group then picks the value that they'd like to assign to the idea without showing the rest of the group. So you might pick a 100 say if its really really important (if you are assigning  business value) or an 8 if its somewhere in the middle. 

The group then turns over their cards at the same time. At this point you will usually find that someone has given the idea a high value, another less so. This is everyone's opportunity to discuss why there is a difference in their scores. It's the conversation at this point that I have found the most valuable. Planning poker is a great way of getting a very detailed opinion from everyone in the group.

The aim of the game is to keep up the discussion until you play again and everyone has agreed the same score for the idea / feature / backlog item. Then you can move onto the next.

This is one of the more useful and fun tools that I've used in product development for a while. If you haven't tried it I would suggest getting a pack of cards and giving it a go, or playing online at planningpoker.com

Comments

[Autoversicherung]

Great comment and my favorit Blog. Thanks and Best Regards

[free poker]

Maintain a calm deportment when you play even when the game becomes heated. Do not ever give your opponents hints through your gestures and body language about what is going to be your move. Perfect timing is also essential in a poker game.