Online planning poker tools have made it simpler for Agile teams to conduct sprint planning sessions whether co-located or distributed. These tools help eliminate long estimation meetings while making sure all team members are aligned on what needs to happen next.
Planning poker helps eliminate anchoring bias and encourages discussion about outlier estimates, leading to improved estimates and healthier sprints.
1. Chpokify
Chpokify is an agile team sprint planning tool designed to enable everyone involved to make estimates and discuss user stories. The platform allows teams to estimate using story points or custom values and is suitable for remote as well as co-located teams. Furthermore, Chpokify features automatic meeting summaries, seamless Jira integration, import/export functionality and other useful functions that make getting started a lot simpler for teams.
Each team member selects a card representing their estimate, keeping this secret until everyone discusses and agrees on an estimate for the story being told. At that point, results can be revealed and further discussion can take place regarding next steps for taking.
Agile development makes use of different estimation techniques, but this one in particular provides greater transparency and more in-depth discussions. Furthermore, its use ensures all stakeholders are committed and involved with the project as well as assist sprint planning while encouraging team participation and increasing collaboration.
2. Hatjitsu
Hatjitsu is an online planning poker tool that makes estimations easy for distributed Agile teams without registration or setup costs. Free for use, the tool supports various estimation methodologies like Fibonacci, T-shirt Scrum and Sequential and offers simple navigation on both a web browser or mobile phone device – simply share the room link to invite team members quickly!
Start by installing the Planning Poker Bot into your Discord server, gathering all participants into a text channel and typing “!start in the bot”. It will display cards with numbers on them that the participants must place bets against before showing each card number to reveal and discuss estimates with their teammates – much like in a backlog refinement meeting!
3. Panter Planning Poker
Panter Planning Poker is a free open source agile estimation web app that is ideal for distributed teams. It allows users to play planning poker using Fibonacci or T-shirt sized card decks and features an intuitive UI/UX that shows team member voting status using emojis.
Planning Poker tools work much like traditional planning methods: the product owner reads an agile user story or feature to everyone present and they select a card representing their estimate of how long a task should take before revealing their cards for discussion and coming to a consensus on when completion should take place.
Studies have demonstrated that Agile planning poker provides more accurate estimates than traditional estimation techniques when used to divide large projects into multiple tasks. Furthermore, using tools like planning poker for estimation meetings often makes meetings more engaging and helps team members feel like part of the planning process – which in turn increases commitment to its objectives and efforts towards realizing them.
4. Sprint Poker
Agile teams often employ planning poker during sprint planning to estimate the effort necessary for each task, a great way to avoid problems associated with group estimation (like overestimating) as well as ensure everyone understands the level of effort necessary.
At a Planning Poker session, each team member assigns an estimated effort they think it takes to complete a task. Once revealed and discussed, outliers can be easily highlighted and any misunderstandings addressed.
Planning poker’s aim is to eliminate anchoring bias (where an initial estimate influences subsequent estimates), promote independent thought processes among individuals, and compel people to submit estimates simultaneously. Online versions of planning poker tools make this process much simpler for remote or distributed teams and may prove to be more fun and productive than traditional discussions.
