Effective estimation is one of the toughest challenges software developers face in their jobs. Regardless of team size, they need to define, estimate, and distribute work throughout a team. As teams get larger, it becomes even more important to build good habits around planning and estimating work. Lack of planning and estimating reduce confidence in a program, breaks down relationships between the team and the business, and makes development harder on everyone.

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Planning poker, also called Scrum poker, is a consensus-based, gamified technique for estimating, mostly used to estimate effort or relative size of development goals in software development. Planning poker is a method on it's own for the estimation of tasks/workpackages. It is not only used in Scrum but can be used whereever it is necessary to leverage communication within a team and get estimates for planning. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Oemmler (talk. contribs) 11:48, 4 April 2017 (UTC). Planning Poker® / Scrum Poker One commonly used method during the estimation process is to play Planning Poker® (also called Scrum Poker). When using Planning Poker®, influence between the participants are minimized and therefore a more accurate estimation result is produced.

A powerful scrum software that supports scrum project management. It features scrum tools like user story map, product backlog management, sprint backlog management, task management, daily scrum meeting, sprint planning tool, sprint review tool, sprint retrospective tool, burndown, impediment, stakeholder and team management.

The Accuracy of Group vs. Individual Estimation

According to some study on the accuracy of estimation of effort between individual and group in an experiment for a software project. 20 software professionals from the same company individually estimated the work effort required to implement the same software development project. The participants had different background and roles and the software project had previously been implemented. After that, they formed five groups. Each group agreed on one estimation by discussing and combining of the knowledge among them.

Result – The estimates based on group discussions were more accurate than the individual estimates.

What is Planning Poker?

Planning poker (also known as Scrum poker) is a consensus-based, gamified technique for estimating, mostly used to estimate effort or relative size of development goals in software development.

Scrum Planning Poker Wikipedia 2017

Steps for Planning Poker

  1. To start a poker planning session, the product owner or customer reads an agile user story or describes a feature to the estimators.
    For example:
    “Customer logs in to the reservation system”
    “Customer enters search criteria for a hotel reservation”
  2. Team members of the group make estimates by playing numbered cards face-down to the table without revealing their estimate (Fibonacci values: 1,2,3,5,8,13,20,40)
  3. Cards are simultaneously displayed
  4. The estimates are then discussed and high and low estimates are explained
  5. Repeat as needed until estimates converge

Scrum Planning Poker Wikipedia -

By hiding the figures in this way, the group can avoid the cognitive bias of anchoring, where the first number spoken aloud sets a precedent for subsequent estimates.

Agile Estimation – Relative vs Absolute

An estimate is nothing more than a well educated guess. We use all the knowledge and experience at hand to make a guess about the amount of time it is going to take. So instead of looking at every new work item separately, why not compare it to previously finished work items? It’s easier for humans to relate to similar items than to guess the actual size of things anyway.

For example, is it closer to this really small thing? Or is it more like this normal sized item? Or is it really huge like that one piece of work we finished last month? Doing relative estimates will not only reduce the amount of time spent on estimating work, it will also heavily increase the accuracy of the estimates.

Our brain is not capable of doing absolute estimates; we always put that new thing that we need to estimate in relationship to things we already know.

Scrum Planning Poker Wikipedia Page

Fibonacci sequence and Planning Poker

Planning Poker uses of the Fibonacci sequence to assign a point value to a feature or user story. The Fibonacci sequence is a mathematical series of numbers that was introduced in the 13th century and used to explain certain formative aspects of nature, such as the branching of trees. The series is generated by adding the two previous numbers together to get the next value in the sequence: 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, and so on.

Scrum Planning Poker Wikipedia Free

For agile estimation purposes, some of the numbers have been changed, resulting in the following series: 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 20, 40, 100 as shown in the Figure below:

The Interpretation of the point assigned to a poker card is listed in the table below:

Card(s)Interpretation
0Task is already completed.
1/2The task is tiny.
1, 2, 3These are used for small tasks.
5, 8, 13These are used for medium sized tasks.
20, 40These are used for large tasks.
100These are used for very large tasks.
<infinity>The task is huge.
?No idea how long it takes to complete this task.
<cup of coffee>I am hungry 🙂

Point vs Hour Value in Estimation

So why use story points instead of time values? Story pointing allows the team to focus on the complexity and time involved in delivering a piece of work. The team compares the new work against work they’ve already done. They compare the complexity of the new assignment against past challenges and rank the difficulty as well as the time required.

Scrum Planning Poker Wikipedia

For example, we don’t often account for “the cost of doing business.” Meetings, email, code reviews, etc. with time values. But in reality, all these are necessary practices throughout in our daily life, but don’t actually count as “work.” Story points isolate the software development work from the associated logistic work items, so estimates using point based should more consistent than hour base approach.

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(Redirected from List of Scrum software)
Planning

This page compares software with specific support for the Scrum framework. Although the features of some general project management software can be conceptualized around Scrum, general project management software is not included on this list unless it has, or a plugin for it has, specific support for Scrum.

General information[edit]

SoftwareWeb-basedHosted On-PremisesSaaSLicenseImplementation programming languages
Azure BoardsYesYesYesProprietary.NET and modern Web frameworks
HeySpaceYesNoYesProprietaryJavaScript
JIRAYesYesYesProprietaryJava
Projektron BCSYesYesYesProprietaryJava
TaigaYesYesYesGPLPython and JavaScript
TrelloYesNoYesProprietary
TuleapYesYesYesGPLPHP and JavaScript

Sprint features[edit]

SoftwareScrum boardCustom columnsBurndown chartSprint goal
Azure BoardsYesYesYesSprint name
HeySpaceYesYesNoSprint description
JIRAYesYesYesYes
Projektron BCSYesYesYesNo
TaigaYesYesYesYes
TrelloYesYesVia pluginNo
TuleapYesYesYesSprint description

Story features[edit]

SoftwareReorderable product backlogStory descriptionAcceptance criteriaStory pointsPlanning pokerPlanning poker points averagingStory claimingComments on storiesChange tracking
Azure BoardsYesYesYesYesVia extension[1]NoYesYesYes
HeySpaceYesYesYesNoNoNoYesYesYes
JIRAYesYesVia custom fieldYesVia pluginVia pluginYesYesYes
Projektron BCSYesYesYesYesNoNoYesYesYes
TaigaYesYesVia custom fieldYesNoNoYesYesYes
TrelloYesYesYesVia pluginVia pluginVia pluginYesYesYes
TuleapYesYesYesYesNoNoYesYesYes

Task features[edit]

SoftwareTasks within storiesTask claimingMultiple people can claim tasksSeparate comments on tasksAuto-story completion[2]
Azure BoardsYesYesNoYesVia extension[3]
HeySpaceYesNoYesYesNo
JIRAYesYesNoYesOptional
Projektron BCSYesYesYesYesNo
TaigaYesYesNoYesYes
TrelloYesNoNoNoNo
TuleapYesYesYesYesYes

Integration features[edit]

SoftwareSlack integrationHipChat integrationData export
Azure BoardsYesYesYes
HeySpaceown built-in featureown built-in featureNo
JIRAYesYesYes
Projektron BCSNoNoYes
TaigaYesYesYes
TrelloYesYes[4]Yes
TuleapNoNoYes

See also[edit]

Notes and references[edit]

  1. ^https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=ms-devlabs.estimate
  2. ^when all tasks have been marked completed
  3. ^https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=tfsaggregatorteam.tfs-aggregator-web-service
  4. ^'Hipchat integrates with Trello'. HipChat. 4 March 2015. Archived from the original on 4 March 2016. Retrieved 1 August 2015.
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