Definition
Planning Poker
Planning poker is a consensus-based estimation technique where team members privately pick a card representing a story's effort, then reveal simultaneously. Divergent estimates spark discussion, and the team re-votes until it converges. Revealing at once prevents anchoring — no one is swayed by the first or loudest number — so estimates capture the whole team's understanding.
Key takeaways
- Planning poker is a consensus-based estimation technique where team members privately pick a card representing a story's effort, then reveal simultaneously. Divergent estimates spark discussion, and the team re-votes until it converges. Revealing at once prevents anchoring — no one is swayed by the first or loudest number — so estimates capture the whole team's understanding.
- Planning poker turns estimation into a structured conversation.
- Planoda stores the agreed estimate on each issue, so the consensus a planning-poker session produces feeds directly into velocity tracking and forecasting.
Planning poker turns estimation into a structured conversation. For each backlog item, every estimator holds a hand of cards, usually a Fibonacci-like scale (1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13…). After a brief discussion of the item, everyone picks a card face-down and all reveal at the same instant. The simultaneity is the entire point: it removes anchoring, where the first number spoken quietly drags everyone toward it.
The value isn't really the number — it's the discussion the spread provokes. When one person says 2 and another says 13, that gap reveals a hidden assumption, an unspotted complexity, or differing understanding of scope. The outliers explain their reasoning, the team re-estimates, and within a round or two it converges. The conversation surfaces risk that a silent average would have buried.
The Fibonacci-style scale is deliberate. The growing gaps reflect that large items are inherently fuzzier — the difference between 1 and 2 is meaningful, but pretending to distinguish 20 from 21 is false precision. The scale nudges teams to break very large items down rather than estimate them.
Planoda stores the agreed estimate on each issue, so the consensus a planning-poker session produces feeds directly into velocity tracking and forecasting.
Related terms
- Story Points (Estimation)Story points are a relative, unitless measure of how much effort an issue will take, accounting for complexity and uncertainty rather than raw hours. Teams estimate in points — often using a Fibonacci-like scale — to compare items against each other quickly. Summed across a cycle, points feed velocity and burndown without false precision about clock time.
- Relative EstimationRelative estimation sizes work by comparing items to each other rather than guessing absolute hours. Teams use techniques like story points, t-shirt sizing (S/M/L), and planning poker to ask 'is this bigger than that?' — a question humans answer more reliably than 'how long will this take?' The sized values then feed velocity and forecasting.
- T-Shirt SizingT-shirt sizing is a relative estimation technique that classifies work into rough buckets — XS, S, M, L, XL — instead of precise numbers. The coarse scale is fast and intuitive, ideal for early, high-level estimation of epics or roadmap items where detailed point estimates would be false precision. It compares relative size rather than predicting exact effort.
- Backlog RefinementBacklog refinement is the ongoing practice of keeping a product backlog ready to work: clarifying items, splitting large ones, adding estimates and acceptance criteria, and re-ordering by priority. Often called grooming, it is continuous rather than a single event, ensuring the top of the backlog is always well-understood and small enough to be pulled into a sprint.
- VelocityVelocity is the average amount of work a team completes per cycle, measured in issues or story points. By tracking it over several cycles, teams forecast how much they can realistically take on next. Velocity is a planning aid for a specific team over time — never a target to maximize or a way to compare teams against each other.