To make your team’s work output predictable, you must be able to estimate team’s velocity and the effort needed to complete your user stories. The Planning Poker® methodology lets you not only estimate your stories but also clarify them at the same time. Unfortunately, during planning meetings conducted via video conferencing software, participants can easily lose interest and get distracted when looking at the screen shared by the other side.
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Now that your entire team is engaged and the quality of their input is high, you can discuss the issues. The scrum master selects stories one-by-one and asks the team to estimate the effort. For each issue, the team should reach consensus. If the first round of estimation reveals significant differences, participants with extreme views explain their estimates. Regardless of the location, they present their assumptions or predicted consequences that produced their estimate values. The scrum master starts the built-in timer to limit the discussion time, making the process more effective and saving time for other issues. After making sure the team is on the same page, either the estimation value becomes obvious or the estimating round needs to be repeated.
Plan effectively and accurately
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