Planning Poker Story Point Estimation in Agile

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
• Any other estimating unit that can be used with planning poker

Estimate instances in ZenTao

You could estimate product, sprint, story, task, test request, etc. when you are trying to create them in ZenTao. Some for specific hours, some for specific days or weeks.

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 selected and revealed at the same time. This process continues until the consensus of all the estimates is achieved.

When everyone holds 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 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, 3 out of 5 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. 

Know more about ZenTao Planning Poker

References

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TxSzo3lwwWQ