Planning poker for a remote team

What a call is missing

First, you can’t see everyone. At a table it is obvious whether people are ready. On a call the facilitator asks “has everyone voted?” and waits for people with muted microphones. An online table fixes this: you see whose card is down, while its value stays hidden until the reveal.

Second, people can’t talk at the same time, so discussing a spread turns into a roll call. A simple rule helps: the two people with the extreme cards get the floor, a minute each, and everyone else writes in the chat.

Third, attention. On a call it is easy to open another tab, and soon only three out of eight people are estimating. Supervision won’t help, but pace will: short rounds, a visible timer and a clear move to the next item.

What you actually need

You don’t need much: a call where everyone can be heard, and a shared table for the cards. Everything else is optional.

• A room people join by link. A sign-up step costs the meeting its first five minutes.
• Cards hidden until the reveal. Otherwise it is voting out loud again.
• A visible list of items, so everyone knows what is being sized right now.
• A timer. It shows when a fourth minute is going into one item.
• A history of estimates, so nobody has to reconstruct the meeting from memory.

Time zones

If the team is spread across four or five hours, the shared working time is short, and estimation competes with other meetings for it. Put the round in the shared hours and keep it short. Half an hour once a week works better than two hours once a sprint.

With more than six hours of difference, someone will have to join very early or very late. A mixed format works better then: cards are collected during the day, and the call only covers items with a wide spread. Half the list can be closed without a meeting at all.

Rules worth saying out loud

In person, a lot is settled with a glance. A remote team needs explicit agreements.

• Reveal only once everybody has put a card down.
• After the reveal, the two people with the extreme estimates speak. Everyone else uses the chat.
• There is no third round. If the second one didn’t converge, the item goes back to refinement.
• Cameras are optional, cards are not.
• People who won’t do the work don’t vote.

How to finish in half an hour

Prepare the list in advance and send it out before the call. Half the questions get answered while people read it. In the session, size one item at a time and don’t reopen closed ones.

A good pace is a minute for a clear item and three to five for a disputed one. Fifteen items fit into half an hour. If you keep running over, the items probably arrive without a proper description.

When the team speaks different languages

In mixed teams, some people read the interface in a second language and don’t ask when something is unclear. Here each person opens the table in their own language. Item names stay exactly as their author wrote them, without translation.