Planning Game
How To Do
"Plans are nothing. Planning is everything." - Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower
The Planning Game is a practice where the XP team and the client work together to prioritize and plan the software functionalities. During the game, User Stories are presented by the client and estimated by the development team in terms of effort. This helps define priorities and allocate work for subsequent iterations, promoting collaboration and shared understanding. The Planning Game is an interactive and participatory approach that facilitates adaptation to changes and alignment of expectations between the client and the development team.
It is called a game due to the 'rule creation' factor, which tends to achieve the goal in a way where each participant creates rules according to their desires and objectives. In the game, the client has the right to present the stories as well as indicate their priorities.
Planning Poker
| # | Backlog Item (User Story) | Story points |
|---|---|---|
| I | As an Accountant, I want to be able to find clients by last name, so that I can locate their profiles more quickly. | 3 |
| II | As a System Administrator, I want to be able to adjust the settings to control access. | 13 |
Planning Poker is an estimation technique used in Extreme Programming (XP) methodology and other agile methodologies. In this practice, the development team, and sometimes the client, gather to estimate the effort required to complete User Stories or other project tasks.
The idea behind Planning Poker is to promote more accurate estimates and a shared understanding of the work. Each team member receives a deck of cards with estimation values, usually represented by Fibonacci numbers or another sequence. A moderator presents the User Story, and the team then selects a card that reflects their estimate for the effort required to complete that task. Estimates are kept secret until everyone has chosen a card. The estimates are then revealed, and if there are significant discrepancies, the team discusses the reasons behind their estimates and may make a new round of estimates.
Planning Poker is effective in XP because it helps avoid unfair influences or biases in estimation and promotes team discussion and consensus. It also allows the team and client to have a shared view of expectations regarding the effort involved in each User Story, which is important for planning and resource allocation.