Planning Poker, also known as Scrum Poker, is a consensus-based, gamified technique for estimating effort or relative size of development goals in software development. It's a fun and engaging way for agile teams to collectively agree on the complexity of user stories or tasks.

In a Planning Poker session, each team member holds a deck of cards, typically with values following a sequence like the Fibonacci series (0, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, ...). After a user story or task is presented and discussed, each estimator privately selects a card representing their estimate. All cards are then revealed simultaneously. This process helps prevent cognitive biases like anchoring and encourages independent thinking.

• Improved Accuracy: Collective wisdom often leads to more realistic estimates than individual guesses.
• Enhanced Collaboration: It fosters discussion, knowledge sharing, and a shared understanding of tasks among team members.
• Identifies Misunderstandings: Large discrepancies in votes highlight different interpretations of a task, prompting valuable clarification.
• Builds Consensus: The process encourages the team to converge on an estimate everyone can agree with.
• Engaging and Fun: The gamified nature makes the estimation process more enjoyable than traditional methods.
• Empowers Team Members: Everyone gets an equal voice in the estimation process.

Planning Poker is a cornerstone of Agile methodologies, particularly Scrum. It's most commonly used during sprint planning meetings to estimate the effort required for items in the product backlog.

Many teams use Planning Poker in conjunction with project management tools like Jira. User stories or tasks from the Jira backlog are brought into the Planning Poker session. Once an estimate is agreed upon, it can be recorded back in Jira, helping with sprint capacity planning and tracking velocity over time. TeamVote.online allows direct input of Jira ticket URLs for easy reference.

The most common scale used in Planning Poker is a modified Fibonacci sequence: 0, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, etc. This scale reflects the inherent uncertainty in estimating larger items – the gap between numbers grows, indicating that precision decreases as size increases.

TeamVote.online also supports special cards:

• ? (Question Mark): Used when a team member is unsure about the task, needs more information, or feels it's not well-defined enough to estimate.
• ☕️ (Coffee Cup): Indicates a need for a break, or that the item isn't ready for estimation (perhaps it needs to be broken down further).
• 0 (Zero): Often used for tasks that are trivial, take almost no effort, or are already done.

TeamVote.online streamlines the Planning Poker process for distributed and co-located agile teams:

• Easy Session Management: Quickly create or join sessions with no registration required.
• Real-time Collaboration: Votes and participant actions are synced instantly for all members.
• Jira Integration (URL Input): Paste Jira ticket URLs for quick reference.
• Standard Estimation Cards: Includes Fibonacci numbers, '?', and '☕️'.
• Vote Revelation & Statistics: Clear display of votes, average, high/low, and agreement status.
• Gamification: Fun highlights like fastest voter and outliers to keep things engaging.
• Focus on Discussion: By handling the mechanics, TeamVote.online lets your team focus on the crucial discussions that lead to better estimates.