Planning poker: a versatile management and decision-making tool
17 October 2024
Method
Decisions, Planning, Prefix playing card Planning poker is a fun, collaborative tool using a card game where each member of a team evaluates a task or decision by choosing a card corresponding to a specific value. The cards are revealed simultaneously, then discussed until a consensus is reached. This avoids influence bias and encourages collective participation in decision-making and the management of various priorities.
Planning poker is often used by agile project teams, but it can also be used to address other important issues within an organisation.
How can planning poker be used?
- Prioritising tasks and projects
Planning poker enables tasks or projects to be ranked according to their impact, urgency or complexity, by fostering a collective consensus. This helps to better manage priorities by taking into account different points of view. - Risk assessment
The tool can be used to estimate the probability and impact of risks in a project, making it easier to take informed decisions on preventive action. - Allocation of resources
Thanks to collaborative estimation, planning poker helps to better allocate resources according to the needs and capacities of the team, thereby optimising efficiency. - Strategic decision-making
Planning poker can be used to evaluate strategic options by weighing up different factors (costs, benefits, feasibility). This makes decision-making more transparent and collective. - Continuous process improvement
By assessing the performance of internal processes, planning poker makes it easier to identify areas for improvement, taking into account the opinions of all employees. - Estimating tasks in an agile project
The main use of planning poker is to estimate the tasks in a project managed by an agile team. Each team member gives a numerical estimate (based on complexity points or units of time) to assess the effort required to complete a task. This collective estimate enables different points of view to be taken into account and uncertainty to be reduced by reaching a consensus, which is crucial for effective sprint planning and priority management.
The benefits of planning poker for an organisation
Using planning poker encourages collective participation, reduces decision-making bias and improves communication between teams. Its adaptable approach makes it useful in many contexts: prioritisation, risk management, strategic decisions, etc. By integrating this tool into your processes, you can optimise team commitment and improve the overall management of your organisation.
Poker planning cards
Planning poker uses a pack of cards in which each card represents a numerical estimate. The values of the cards are based on the Fibonacci sequence (1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, etc) with a few adjustments to make the sequence easier to use in a professional context (such as the addition of the 0 and 0.5 cards, the upper values rounded up to 20, 40 and 100 and the ‘?’ symbol to indicate uncertainty).
Why take inspiration from the Fibonacci sequence?
The Fibonacci sequence is used because it reflects the idea that the more complex a task, the more difficult it becomes to estimate its effort precisely. The values increase exponentially, capturing this uncertainty. This increasing difference helps teams to avoid focusing too much on minor differences when tasks become more complex and uncertain.
In short, using the Fibonacci sequence encourages teams to focus on orders of magnitude rather than over-precise estimates, taking into account the natural margins of error in estimating complex tasks.
How can you successfully estimate time and costs?
5 February 2024 Method
Prefix playing card, Scheduling, Tip The challenge of each estimate is to identify the most realistic value possible, so that at the end of the project, the difference between the estimated value and the actual value is as small as possible.
To get as close as possible to this realistic value, I use the following approach:
- I start by noting the value that comes to me intuitively, whatever it may be.
- I use one or more of the following estimation methods:
- By breakdown. Breaking down the element to be estimated into sub-elements, up to a level at which it becomes possible to make an estimate.
- Expert judgement. Consultation with people experienced in the field related to the item being valued.
- Estimation by analogy. Reference to similar projects or project elements whose value is known through experimentation, while adapting this value to the new context.
- Parametric estimation. Estimate based on statistical data specific to the field of the element being estimated.
- Mean value. Calculation of an average value, based on the most optimistic value and the most pessimistic value.
- Poker planning. Collaborative and consensual estimation method, using a pack of cards bearing different values.
- I add to the value obtained a reserve linked to the level of uncertainty in the estimate. This reserve can range from 10% to cover a minor contingency to 300% for highly uncertain situations. For very specific projects, some people use the pi-figure method to define the reserve to be included in their estimates.
- I compare the intuitive value with the value established using one of the above methods. If they are consistent, I have sufficient confidence in the value established. If the values are inconsistent, I redo the intuitive estimate and use other methods.
The pi-figure method
The pi-figure method is entirely empirical and can be interpreted by the fact that a non-performing team spends 3x as much time carrying out the tasks it has estimated and that there is 3x as much work behind the unknown tasks.
The method therefore consists of combining these two factors to estimate the amount by which the value should be multiplied to include the reserve, according to the following rules:
- π^2 when the project team is not yet performing well and is doing something it does not know how to do,
- π when the project team is not yet performing well but is doing something it knows how to do,
- π when the project team is performing well but doing something they don’t know anything about,
- √π when the project team is performing well and doing something it knows how to do.
