What is planning poker

Why a separate method was needed

When a team estimates out loud, one person after another, anchoring kicks in. The first number becomes the reference point for everyone else. Someone about to say “eight” hears “two” and says “three”, because nobody wants to look slow. You get an estimate, but no real discussion.

The second effect is authority. If the tech lead or the most senior engineer speaks first, the others simply agree. The team ends up recording one person’s opinion as a shared one.

Face-down cards remove both effects. While the cards are hidden, nobody influences anybody. After the reveal you see the real spread, and it almost always means people understood the item differently.

How a round goes

The order is the same in a meeting room and on a call:

• The facilitator names the item and briefly explains what has to be done.
• The team asks questions. Most of the unknowns come out at this step.
• Everyone picks a card without showing it to the others.
• Once everybody has chosen, all cards are revealed at the same time.
• If the estimates are close, the result is recorded and the team moves on.
• If they differ, the people with the extreme cards speak. The question for them is simple: what do you see that I don’t?
• After the discussion the round is repeated. A second one is usually enough.

Where the method came from

James Grenning came up with the technique in 2002. His team spent hours arguing about estimates, so he handed out cards and had everyone show their numbers at the same time. The method became widely known after Mike Cohn’s 2005 book “Agile Estimating and Planning”, which also gave us the familiar Fibonacci deck.

Little has changed since. Paper cards were replaced by screens because teams no longer fit in one room. The mechanics stayed the same: a hidden card, a simultaneous reveal, a conversation about the spread.

What the method actually gives you

Planning poker does not make an estimate more accurate. It makes it shared.

The main value is the conversation between the first and second rounds. One person says “two”, another says “eight”, and it turns out the first was thinking of a form change while the second remembered the data migration and three other places that use the form. Without the cards, this would have come up in the middle of the sprint.

The second effect is participation. Everyone estimates, and a junior engineer’s card counts as much as the lead’s. Their “eight” is also a reason to stop and look again.

What not to expect from it

Planning poker does not give you deadlines. Story points describe the size of the work. How many days that takes depends on how much the team gets done in a sprint, how many people are ill and how much time goes into support.

It does not measure individual productivity either. Comparing estimates across teams is meaningless: a point is one team’s own agreement about what counts as a “two”. Once points become part of reporting, they start growing on their own.

When you can skip it

If an item comes up every week and everybody knows its size, skip the round and write down the usual number. If the team is two people who work together every day, it is faster to agree out loud.

The method is useful when there are many unknowns and people picture the item differently. That usually means anything the team is doing for the first time.