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Planning poker is a widely used estimation method for agile software development teams (Prakash & Viswanathan, 2017; Soni & Kohli, 2017; Usman et al., 2017). The estimation method uses a consensus approach to estimate development effort that minimizes peer pressure (Taylor, 2016) and is useful if historical data is not available (Anooja & Rajawat, 2017). The first step in planning poker is a domain expert explaining the user story to the team and providing clarification if requested (Lopez-Martinez, Ramirez-Noriega, Juarez-Ramirez, Licea, & Martinez-Ramirez, 2017; Torrecilla-Salinas et al., 2015). The next step is the creation by the team’s members of a private preliminary estimate followed by the display of their estimations to the entire team, typically using cards that represent a value (Torrecilla-Salinas et al. , 2015). Team members explain the reasoning for estimations, and each member reflects on the other explanations (Miranda, 2017). Additional estimation rounds may be needed if estimates differ significantly (Miranda, 2017; Torrecilla-Salinas et al. , 2015). The estimators that provide the highest and lowest values explain their reasoning, and the team continues with subsequent rounds until it reaches a consensus, and an agreed upon amount is determined (Torrecilla-Salinas et al., 2015; Vyas, Bohra, Lamba, & Vyas, 2018). Planning poker can consist of several rounds of discussion and re-estimation to reach consensus (Bilgaiyan et al. , 2017; Choetkiertikul et al., 2018). Much like the Delphi method, developers use a collective forum in the planning poker technique, and open discussions provide a group-based agreement to the estimate.
The estimation methodology is a team-based exercise used for assigning a relative estimate value to a requirement that expresses expressing the level of effort required to deliver the specific feature. Planning poker traditionally uses the numerical sequence such as the Fibonacci sequence (Ramirez-Noriega, Juarez-Ramirez, Navarro, & Lopez-Martinez, 2016). Planning poker is a standard estimation approach and requires expert opinion and analogy (Osman & Musa, 2016; Usman et al. , 2017). Planning poker estimations are consensus-based and result in a value or size estimation of effort.
The planning poker method is most effective when an expert is engaged in the estimation and when the team has previous experience with similar tasks. Planning poker was introduced by Grenning (Rai et al., 2017) in 2002; the technique combines expert opinion, analogy, and disaggregation into a quick and reliable estimation method. The goal of planning poker is to arrive at an estimation that will withstand future scrutiny (Osman & Musa, 2016). Planning poker is an incremental team-based method that collectively analyzes requirements and determines an estimation (Dönmez & Grote, 2018). The distinct difference between planning poker and Delphi is that not all group members in a planning poker session are required to be experts.