Planning Poker – also known as Scrum Poker – is an agile estimation technique based on team consensus. It is most often used in Scrum during Sprint Planning or Backlog Refinement sessions. The purpose is to estimate the relative complexity and effort of User Stories or features.
Unlike top-down estimation, Planning Poker leverages the collective intelligence of the team that will actually do the work, ensuring that technical, functional, and quality perspectives are all considered.
How a Planning Poker Session Works
1. Story presentation: The Product Owner or stakeholder explains a User Story or feature. The team asks clarifying questions.
2. Individual estimation: Each team member secretly selects a card from their Planning Poker deck.
3. Reveal: All cards are shown simultaneously to avoid anchoring bias.
4. Discussion: If there are large differences, those who gave the lowest and highest estimates explain their reasoning.
5. Revote: The process is repeated until the team converges on a shared estimate.
The Fibonacci Sequence in Planning Poker
Most Planning Poker decks use a modified Fibonacci sequence:
0, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 20, 40, 100
The exponential progression reflects the fact that larger, more complex stories are harder to estimate precisely:
· 0: Trivial, negligible effort (or already done).
· 1–3: Small, well-understood items.
· 5–8: Medium stories, moderate complexity.
· 13–20: Large stories with higher risk or dependencies.
· 40–100: Very large or vague stories – strong signal to split them into smaller pieces.
The use of Fibonacci numbers acknowledges the growing uncertainty of large items and makes it explicit in the estimates.
Why Planning Poker? – Challenges Addressed
· Avoiding anchoring effects: Simultaneous reveal ensures early opinions don’t bias others.
· Equal participation: Every team member’s view counts, not just the loudest or most senior.
· Consensus, not compromise: Divergent estimates lead to meaningful discussion and shared understanding.
· Transparency: Different perspectives (developer, tester, UX, operations) are surfaced explicitly.
· Focus on complexity, not hours: Estimates are expressed in Story Points, representing relative effort, risk, and uncertainty rather than absolute time.
Common Challenges
· Overlong debates: Teams may drift into excessive detail; strong facilitation keeps focus.
· Misuse of Story Points: Some organizations wrongly convert Story Points directly into hours, undermining the purpose.
· Over-formalization: Planning Poker should be pragmatic – not every small story requires full rounds.
· Large discrepancies: Often reveal hidden risks, unclear requirements, or knowledge gaps – making them a valuable learning signal.
Practical Relevance in Agile Work
Planning Poker is more than just an estimation method. It is a conversation tool that:
· Surfaces knowledge gaps,
· Exposes risks early,
· Builds shared understanding between team and Product Owner,
· and helps teams split backlog items more effectively.
In this sense, Planning Poker becomes a driver of learning, transparency, and predictability – all core principles of agile work.
CALADE Perspective
In practice, Planning Poker is often used mechanically. At CALADE, we help teams unlock its true value as a communication and learning practice. Our experienced coaches and trainers demonstrate how Planning Poker can be combined with heuristics such as Story Splitting, value-driven prioritization, and risk analysis. This transforms estimation sessions into catalysts for alignment, better planning, and self-organization.
Related Terms
· Story Points
· Backlog Refinement
· Sprint Planning
· Relative Estimation Techniques (e.g. T-Shirt Sizes, Affinity Estimation)
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