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A popular agile estimation technique is planning poker. It is consensus based and used to estimate the product backlog, story points, ideal days and etc.
So, how is planning poker game played? First, every person in the team must hold a deck of planning poker cards. In each card, there’s a value like 0, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 20, 40, and 100. Then the product owner or customer will present an agile user story or describe a feature to the estimators which is the whole team. They will discuss the feature to clearly understand its aspects. After the discussion, each estimator will collect one card privately to represent his/her estimate. Then those chosen cards are revealed at the same time.
If the value selected by all the estimators are the same, then that value becomes the estimate for the story. If not, then estimators discuss their estimates further, especially the ones who chose the lowest and highest values. After discussion, each one of them reselect an estimate card. The process continues until the consensus of all estimators is achieved.
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