Home / Guides / How to run planning poker

How to run planning poker

Planning poker turns estimation into a short conversation instead of a negotiation. Here is how to run it well, whether your team is in one room or spread across time zones.

Before the session

• Pick the stories. Bring the stories you expect to discuss, refined enough that the team can ask good questions. Ten to fifteen is a lot for one hour.
• Agree on the deck. Most teams use Fibonacci story points. If you don’t have a habit yet, read how to choose a deck.
• Have a reference. Agree on one or two well-known past stories (“the login page was a 3”). Everyone estimates relative to them.
• Invite the people who will do the work. The product owner explains and answers; they usually observe rather than vote.

The voting loop

1. Present the story. The product owner reads it out and the team asks questions. Keep this to a couple of minutes.
2. Everyone votes in private. Each person picks the card that matches their estimate. Nobody sees anyone else’s card yet, so nobody anchors on the first number said aloud.
3. Reveal together. All cards flip at once.
4. If the votes agree, accept and move on. Don’t discuss a story the team already agrees on.
5. If they don’t, the extremes talk first. The lowest and the highest voter explain their reasoning. Often one of them knows something the others don’t.
6. Vote again. Usually one more round is enough. If it isn’t, split the story or park it with a question to answer.

Keeping the pace

• Timebox discussions. A visible countdown helps people wrap up without the facilitator cutting them off.
• Don’t average. If votes are 3 and 13, the average (8) is a number nobody believed. Discuss instead.
• Use “?” and ☕. A “?” says “I don’t understand this story yet”; take it seriously. A coffee card means it’s time for a break.
• Watch the clock per story. If one story takes twenty minutes, it probably needs splitting more than estimating.

Remote and hybrid teams

Physical cards don’t work on a video call, and asking people to type a number into the chat lets them see each other’s answers first. An online planning poker room keeps votes hidden until the reveal and shows everyone the same table. See planning poker for remote teams.

How PointHuddle helps

• Votes stay hidden until the reveal, then the table shows how far apart you are and who voted lowest and highest.
• A shared timer, a story queue you can import from Jira or CSV, and keyboard shortcuts for the facilitator.
• An optional confidence vote shows when everyone agrees but nobody is sure.
• Afterwards, export the estimates or compare them with what the work really took.