Planning poker, introduced back in the early days of XP, has become a standard ritual in many agile processes.
To paraphrase the Hitchhiker’s Guide, although planning poker frequently leads to estimates that are “apocryphal, or at least wildly inaccurate, it scores over older, more pedestrian techniques in two important respects. First, it is almost entirely informal; and secondly it let’s consultancies inscribe their name in large friendly letters on the back of each card”.
In 20 slides I’ll describe how planning poker is supposed to work, why it usually doesn’t, and offer some alternatives that might work better for you. Along the way we’ll also try to answer one of the universe’s most difficult questions: how long is a piece of string?
