Planning poker
Okay kiddo, have you ever played a game where you and your friends have to guess the number of candies in a jar and the person closest to the actual number wins the candies? Well, planning poker is a game like that, but for grown-ups who work in teams to complete job or projects, like building a house, creating a new app, or planning a big party.
In planning poker, instead of guessing the number of candies, each person in the team who's responsible for doing a task, like designing a logo or coding a feature for an app, tries to guess how long it'll take them to finish the task. They do this by picking a card that shows a number, like 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 20, 40, or 100. These numbers are called story points, and they represent the relative size or complexity of the task, not the actual time it'll take to complete it.
Once everyone in the team has picked a card, they all reveal their cards at once, and whoever picked the highest and the lowest cards explain why they chose them. Then, they all discuss their reasoning and try to come to a consensus on what the actual story point should be for the task. They do this to make sure that everyone on the team has the same understanding of the task's scope, risks, and constraints.
The game continues until all the tasks required for a project are estimated with story points. This helps the team prioritize the tasks in order of complexity, and schedule them based on their capacity and efficiency. By doing this, the team can avoid overcommitting or underdelivering, and adjust their plans as needed.
In planning poker, instead of guessing the number of candies, each person in the team who's responsible for doing a task, like designing a logo or coding a feature for an app, tries to guess how long it'll take them to finish the task. They do this by picking a card that shows a number, like 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 20, 40, or 100. These numbers are called story points, and they represent the relative size or complexity of the task, not the actual time it'll take to complete it.
Once everyone in the team has picked a card, they all reveal their cards at once, and whoever picked the highest and the lowest cards explain why they chose them. Then, they all discuss their reasoning and try to come to a consensus on what the actual story point should be for the task. They do this to make sure that everyone on the team has the same understanding of the task's scope, risks, and constraints.
The game continues until all the tasks required for a project are estimated with story points. This helps the team prioritize the tasks in order of complexity, and schedule them based on their capacity and efficiency. By doing this, the team can avoid overcommitting or underdelivering, and adjust their plans as needed.