Estimate The Right Way

Planning poker is an estimation technique commonly used by agile development teams to help size their upcoming tasks (or stories! ).

Each story is first presented to the team who then each add further detail and context.

All members of the team then secretly choose their estimate from their available cards.

Some team's use story points, others use t-shirt sizes or another relative scale of effort!

Once everyone has made a decision, all the cards are revealed and the results are evaluated.

Sometimes there is a consensus, other times estimates can vary wildly - that's fine too!

As a team, discuss each other's estimates as required - reason, persuade, clarify and repeat until a consensus is reached!

Every team and project is different and there is no single agreed "right way" to plan and estimate work.

That said, it is a standard practice for agile development teams these days to estimate work in terms of effort, rather than time. This shift in mindset allows the team to focus not on spending time, but on solving problems and delivering value.

Estimating effort using a relative scale, commonly story points, allows the team to factor many complex variables into the decision making process such as the strength of the team, business processes and even unknown quantities, and still produce a shared understanding of the amount of work required.

Each team will develop their own understanding of what each estimate means for them. Over time this allows them to quickly assess and estimate work as it comes, constantly comparing and refining their decisions based on their previous estimates.

Moreover, using a scale of effort forces the team to consider the challenges of a piece of work, ask difficult questions and break work down into smaller tasks where necessary, resulting in a more streamlined and achievable backlog to work at.