
Outcome-Driven Feature Prioritization for Agile Teams | Alfa Sommersol
Learn how focusing on business outcomes instead of features can lead to better decision-making, faster delivery, and more value for your customers.
Imagine you are leading an Agile team working remotely across various geographies. The challenge is to maintain the essence of Agile practices, particularly Scrum Poker or story point estimation, a crucial element of Scrum. A typical scenario, right? Well, here's the solution - Online estimation using online Scrum Poker or Planning Poker.
Picture: Poker Game - Cassius Marcellus Coolidge (1894)
23.06.2023
Alfa Sommersol
Online Scrum Poker is a digital solution to conduct scrum poker, a standard practice in scrum ceremonies. With increasing remote work and globally dispersed teams, virtual tools like online planning poker facilitate agile practices effectively.
The Scrum poker room is your unique link or session wher your team can play scrum poker. You can set up an online planning poker room in mere seconds. An instant room feature is available, and you can bookmark or keep the link to retain the room number for future planning sessions, making set-up even quicker.
Once the room is set up, you can invite your team members by sharing the link to the online scrumpoker poker room. If finding a common timeslot is tricky, consider creating a poll using tools like Whocan.org.
As your team enters the room, you can not see their online presence until a vote is cast. However, since scrum poker or planning poker require verbal communication this is not a problem. Scrum poker begin and the team members submit their estimates, view who has provided the estimates, and reveal the results.
Good planning sessions are vital in Scrum, SAFE, or any Agile methodologies that use story-point estimations to judge feature complexity. Understanding the recipe for successful planning requires examining a well-prepared user story, its presentation, the poker best practices, and handling discrepancies between estimates.
To have a successful estimation session, it's essential that the user story or feature to be estimated is ready. It involves refining sessions where the product owner, along with the development team, discusses the story's details. It starts with the product owner explaining succinctly what the user wants and the value it will provide. Then, high-level acceptance criteria are discussed and defined by the scrum team.
With the user story discussed and questions answered, all members of the development team start estimating the complexity of the story by assigning story points using tools like scrumpoker-online.org. Story points are an abstract measure representing the complexity of implementing a user story. They are related to effort, risk, and anticipated difficulties.
Once all estimates are submitted, the results are revealed. If there's a discrepancy, the members with the most differing estimates discuss their reasoning, leading to possibly redefining acceptance criteria.
Well-estimated stories assist the product owner in judging if a user story's value is worth the complexity and effort to implement. It also aids in planning a sprint, as the team knows how many story points they achieved in the previous sprint.
Online planning poker promotes a shared understanding of expectations. It nurtures transparency, improves coordination, and helps maintain the flow of Agile practices in a remote working environment.
In today's digital era, online tools like planning poker are reshaping the landscape of Agile methodologies. By adopting such strategies, we can ensure that the essence of Agile practices such as scrum ceremonies, story estimation, and scrum poker is preserved, no matter where your team is located.
Learn how focusing on business outcomes instead of features can lead to better decision-making, faster delivery, and more value for your customers.
Learn how to write user stories and prioritize them effectively in agile development, including templates for feature requests and bug reports.
This guide provides valuable insights and tips for anyone interested in understanding the role of a Scrum Master.