🃏 Scrum Poker
Planning
Poker
Estimate user stories as a team with anonymous voting.
Reach consensus without anchoring bias.
How does Scrum Poker work?
Planning Poker · Agile estimation
Planning Poker is an agile estimation technique that uses the team's collective judgement to arrive at more accurate estimates, eliminating anchoring bias that occurs when someone speaks first.
The Process
Present the story
The Scrum Master selects a user story and explains it to the team. Questions are clarified before voting.
Vote in secret
Each member privately chooses a card. Nobody sees the others' choices until the reveal.
Reveal and discuss
All cards are revealed simultaneously. If there is disagreement, the outliers debate their reasoning.
Reach consensus
Re-vote until there is agreement. The SM accepts the final estimate and moves to the next story.
Special Cards
?
Uncertainty — I don't have enough information to estimate.
☕
Break — we need a break or the discussion has gone on too long.
0
Zero effort — the story is already done or is trivial.
Why the Fibonacci sequence?
As stories get larger, uncertainty grows exponentially. The non-linear scale (1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13…) reflects this reality — it's impossible to know whether something takes 34 or 35 points, but the difference between 13 and 21 is significant. This forces the team to think in orders of magnitude, not exact hours.
Tips
If there is wide spread, the outliers should explain their reasoning before re-voting.
Limit each vote to 2-3 rounds. If there is no consensus, choose the higher value.
Small stories (1-3 pts) are easy to estimate; focus the debate on the larger ones.
The SM should never reveal their estimate before the others — it creates anchoring.