The Unveiled Strategy: How Online Scrum Poker Can Propel Your Agile Practices

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

What is the Scrum poker method?

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 Mechanics of Online Planning Poker

What is Scrum poker room?

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.

Inviting Colleagues

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.

Beginning the Scrum Poker

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.

The Art of Successful Story Estimations

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.

Ensuring User Story Readiness

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.

Employing Scrum Poker for Estimates

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.

Unveiling the Results

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.

The Significance of Story Estimates

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.

Learnings from the Virtual Planning Poker

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.

Conclusion

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.