TUSHAR MARADWAR

What is Planning Poker??
Planning poker also known as Scrum poker. It is a team building activity where all team members involved for achieving group consensus, based on this consensus team come to know how long a certain amount of work will take to complete. planning poker is often associated with Agile software development, this activity can be used with any group that needs to estimate the time it will take to complete a project. 
In this activity each person of development team actively participates in the estimation process and contributes his/ her knowledge.  It is especially useful for projects in which there can be a lot of unknown variables and multiple areas of expertise are required in order to get an accurate estimate. Planning poker was first described  by James Grenning in 2002, it is a more informal version the Wideband Delphi Method, an approach to achieving consensus developed by the RAND Corporation in the 1940s.
 
Following are Key Steps in  Planning Poker, which help to develop estimation for Project.
 
1.Product owner/Customer reads story: This is first step of Planning pocker where to start session, the product owner/customer reads an agile user story or describes a feature to  all team members. 2.Team estimates: After listening story from Product owner, Team members of the group make estimates by playing numbered cards without revealing their estimate. Following are Interpretation of the point assigned to a poker card     3.Team discuss: After step 2, cards are displayed one by one  and the estimates are then discussed , however some cards will be different from others.  At this point, the facilitator moderate a discussion and invite the team members who threw high and low cards to explain their rationale.  The business owner’s role at this time is to answer questions.   4.Team estimates again: The process is repeated until the group achieves consensus or the facilitator decides that consensus cannot be reached and the story must be broken down into simpler parts before the project can move forward.   Benefits :
•In this activity discussion among team member leads towards accurate estimation. •It offers an opportunity to leverage the knowledge of all team members. •Each Team members get opportunity to justify their estimations. •Time estimates are based on group consensus rather than an individual's opinions, thus increasing buy-in by the entire team •It fosters a deep discussion of the reasons for various time estimates, which leads to better knowledge among the participants.  
Limitations :
•Estimation changes with the different skills and experiences. •Meeting may take longer time if moderator not managed well. •The results from planning poker exercises can also be a little too hot to handle.