Hello and welcome to knowledgehut.
In this video, we will be discussing a very
popular Agile Estimation Technique called
Planning Poker.
Let us begin with understanding what is meant
by ‘Estimation’?
In software development, an estimate, consists
of a quantified evaluation of the effort which
is necessary to carry out a given development
task; this is most often expressed in terms
of duration.
The intent here is to aggregate many
individual estimates, so as to obtain an indication
of the overall duration, effort or cost of
a software project.
Planning Poker is a consensus-based estimating
technique.
In Agile it is used to estimate the product
backlog.
Story points, ideal days, or any other estimating
unit can be used with planning poker.
So how to use planning poker for agile estimation
and planning?
At the start of the planning poker session,
every person in the team holds a deck of planning
poker cards.
Each card contains a value like 0, 1, 2, 3,
5, 8, 13, 20, 40 and 100.
The product owner or customer then reads an
agile user story or describes a feature to
the estimators.
Here the term ‘estimators’ means the whole
team.
The estimators discuss the feature to clearly
understand all of its aspects.
When they are done with discussing the features,
each estimator privately selects one card
to represent his or her estimate.
All cards are then revealed at the same time.
If the value selected by all the estimators
are same, then that value becomes the estimate
for the story.
If not, then all the estimators discuss their
estimates further.
The estimators who selected the highest and
the lowest value should especially share their
reasons.
After further discussion, each estimator reselects
an estimate card, and all cards are again
revealed at the same time.
This process continues until the consensus
of all the estimators is achieved.
When everyone is holding up the same number,
we are done.
That number is written as the estimate and
we move on.
But if the numbers are different, we discuss
it and estimate again.
When there is a tie in the voting between
two sizes which are consecutive, for example,
5 and 8, just pick the larger size and move
on.
It saves a lot of time and also saves the team from the perils of running out of time
due to underestimation of the size of a task.
If the difference between the estimates is
very large, for example, three out of four
people are holding 5 and one person is holding
a 100 then there is clearly either a product
uncertainty or technical uncertainty regarding
the task.
In such a case it is better to put the story
aside and come back in the next meeting after
doing proper research.
So this was how you play planning poker for
Agile estimation and planning.
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