Planning poker is one of the most practical, team-centered techniques for estimating effort in agile product development. When used well, it reduces bias, encourages collaboration, and produces estimates teams can commit to. In this guide I’ll share hands-on advice from real sprints, variations that work for distributed teams, common traps to avoid, and a reproducible session script you can use in the next sprint planning.
Why planning poker works
At its core, planning poker converts a subjective opinion into a structured, team-based conversation. Instead of a single person declaring how long something will take, every participant reveals an independent estimate and then discusses differences. That simple change does three things:
- Mitigates anchoring bias — no one knows others’ numbers until the reveal.
- Uncovers hidden assumptions — large estimate gaps typically expose missing context, dependencies, or technical unknowns.
- Creates shared ownership — the team negotiates scope and commitment, rather than accepting top-down estimations.
In practice I’ve found that teams who commit to a brief but consistent planning poker cadence produce steadier velocity and fewer “surprise” stories mid-sprint.
When to use planning poker
Planning poker is best for:
- Backlog refinement sessions where clarity on effort and complexity is needed
- Sprints where multiple disciplines contribute to a story (dev, QA, UX, ops)
- New teams forming an initial shared understanding of relative sizing
Avoid using it for trivial tasks that are clearly under an hour, or for work that is entirely research-oriented where estimates would be meaningless without a spike.
Common decks and scales
There are a few common scales that teams use. Choose one and stick with it so relative sizing remains meaningful:
- Fibonacci (1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 20, 40, 100) — the most common; it emphasizes uncertainty growth as size increases.
- Modified Fibonacci (0.5, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13) — useful when you need finer granularity for small tasks.
- T-shirt sizes (XS, S, M, L, XL) — good for non-technical stakeholders or high-level planning.
- Power-of-two (1, 2, 4, 8, 16) — forces clearer differentiation between sizes.
Pick the deck that fits your context; I usually recommend starting with Fibonacci because many teams find it intuitive and it discourages false precision on bigger work.
Roles and expectations
Clear roles make sessions productive:
- Product owner — presents the story, acceptance criteria, and answers scope questions.
- Facilitator/Scrum master — keeps time, enforces the process (no side conversations), and ensures everyone participates.
- Development team — provides the estimates. Encourage cross-functional representation (QA, dev, UX).
A simple ground rule: everyone must make an independent estimate before any discussion of numbers. This keeps the process honest.
Step-by-step session script you can copy
Here is a reproducible script I use when running a one-hour backlog refinement focused on planning poker:
- Quick context (5 minutes): Product owner summarizes the sprint goals and any new constraints.
- Select top-priority stories (5 minutes): Pick a subset that fits the timebox.
- Story read and acceptance criteria (5 minutes per story): Product owner reads and clarifies. Team can ask questions but no discussion of size yet.
- Private estimate (1 minute): Each participant privately selects a card.
- Reveal (30 seconds): Everyone reveals simultaneously.
- Discuss outliers (5–7 minutes): If all numbers are within one step, accept the median. If there’s wide variance, ask the high and low estimators to explain their reasoning. Inspect hidden risks.
- Revote (1 minute): After discussion, vote again. Repeat until convergence or decide to break the story into smaller pieces or schedule a spike.
- Record final size and any noted assumptions (30 seconds): Capture the estimate and what triggered it.
Keeping tight timeboxes reduces overdiscussion. If a story is taking too long, convert it into a spike or split it up.
Handling distributed and asynchronous teams
Remote teams can run planning poker with physical decks, video calls, or digital tools. Here are practical approaches:
- Use an online planning poker tool or a shared collaboration board. Many integrated tools let participants vote anonymously and reveal simultaneously.
- If time zones prevent synchronous sessions, use an asynchronous process: post the story, set a time window for private votes, and then host a short synchronous meeting to reconcile differences.
- Make recordings of the short discussion for those who couldn’t attend and ask them to confirm the final estimate within a reasonable time window.
When I worked with a globally distributed team, asynchronous voting reduced meeting load and improved participation from colleagues in different regions — as long as the team respected the closing window for votes and scheduled a concise reconciliation call.
Common pitfalls and how to avoid them
Planning poker is simple, but teams can derail it if they’re not careful:
- Facilitator bias: If the Scrum master or PO nudges the team, you lose independent thinking. Solution: enforce the “no comments until reveal” rule.
- One dominant voice: Some senior engineers dominate discussions and anchor others. Solution: anonymize votes where possible and rotate facilitators.
- Using estimates as commitments for scope creep: Size is an input for planning, not a contract for execution. Use velocity and capacity to guide sprint planning.
- Overprecision on big stories: Large estimates hide uncertainty. Break big stories into smaller, testable increments or create a spike to reduce uncertainty.
When planning poker should evolve
After several sprints a team’s context may change — codebase stabilizes, architecture shifts, or team composition changes. Indicators you should evolve the approach:
- Consistent underestimation or overestimation across sprints (revisit the definition of “done” and how you measure effort)
- High variance in estimates despite repeated discussions (introduce technical refinement or address systemic unknowns)
- Too many stories need re-estimation mid-sprint (improve grooming cadence and clarity of acceptance criteria)
Measuring effectiveness
Measure planning poker’s impact with a few practical metrics:
- Estimate accuracy: Compare estimated effort to actual effort over several sprints and track convergence.
- Story throughput: Has the number of completed stories per sprint become more predictable?
- Time spent in refinement: Is planning poker helping reduce rework and review cycles?
Numbers matter, but combine them with qualitative feedback from retrospectives: do people feel clearer about the work after estimation?
Real-world example (anecdote)
On one project I joined, the team’s velocity fluctuated wildly. After a few sessions I noticed developers were anchoring on a senior engineer’s offhand comments. We switched to anonymous online voting and enforced strict 3–5 minute discussion limits per story. Within three sprints variance dropped by nearly half, and our sprint commitments became much more reliable. The solution wasn’t a fancy tool — it was changing behavior and process discipline.
Tools and integrations
There are many digital tools for running planning poker, but tool selection should follow needs, not the other way around. Popular patterns include:
- Standalone planning poker apps with anonymous voting and reporting
- Integrations with issue trackers so final sizes automatically update story fields
- Video conferencing + screen-sharing a virtual card deck for transparency
To explore an example of a planning poker deck or online implementation, consider checking resources like planning poker that demonstrate how digital decks streamline remote sessions. For teams that value integration, linking votes back to your backlog reduces manual transcription errors.
Advanced tips for experienced teams
When a team becomes proficient, you can refine the technique:
- Introduce complexity points separately from effort points when work has significant operational complexity versus coding time.
- Use dual-estimates for risky stories: one estimate for best-case and another for risk-adjusted cost; plan buffer accordingly.
- Apply Monte Carlo or probabilistic forecasting to your historical story sizes to plan releases with confidence intervals rather than single-date predictions.
Frequently asked questions
How long should a planning poker session be?
Keep it time-boxed: 45–90 minutes for a regular grooming session is typical. Any longer and attention wanes; consider multiple short sessions instead.
What if the team can’t agree after multiple rounds?
When consensus can’t be reached, break the story into smaller pieces, create a spike to reduce unknowns, or let the product owner decide a provisional size with a follow-up plan to validate assumptions early in the sprint.
Can planning poker be used outside software?
Absolutely. Any team estimating effort for collaborative work — marketing campaigns, content creation, operations tasks — can adapt the method to reach a shared understanding of relative effort.
Closing: integrate planning poker into your rhythm
Planning poker is more than a ceremony — it’s a tool for building shared understanding and predictable delivery. Start small: pick a consistent deck, enforce simple facilitation rules, and measure whether clarity and predictability improve. Over time you’ll refine the cadence, scales, and tooling that best fit your team.
If you want a quick place to try a digital deck and see how anonymous voting and automatic recording affect your team dynamics, give a sample tool a spin like planning poker. For practical adoption, run a short pilot with three sprints and inspect whether estimate variance and sprint predictability improve; then scale the practice.
Good planning poker sessions are short, disciplined, and focused on surfacing assumptions. Follow the process, experiment thoughtfully, and your team will gain estimation confidence and better sprint outcomes.
For reference material and a sample deck download, visit planning poker and explore the options that match your team’s workflow.
