The 7 Best Free Planning Poker Tools

In agile environments, planning needs to be fast yet accurate. Lengthy estimates with extensive requirements documents are out of place here. Instead, we want to reach results quickly and build on them iteratively.

Nevertheless, solid estimation of upcoming tasks is essential. Ideally, the entire team works together on planning so all perspectives are included. But there's a trap: More experienced colleagues, experts, or extroverted team members can drown out quieter voices and skew the results.

Planning Poker (also known as Scrum Poker) solves exactly this problem. It enables playful, simple, and objective estimation where every voice counts equally.

Each team member receives cards with different values (typically the Fibonacci sequence: 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21...). For each task to be estimated, everyone simultaneously and secretly selects a card.

Only when everyone has chosen are the cards revealed. When estimates differ, the team discusses the reasons – especially the highest and lowest estimators explain their perspective. Then another round of estimation follows until consensus is reached.

The key advantage: No one can be influenced by others since everyone estimates simultaneously and independently. This way, valuable insights from junior developers or introverted team members are also heard.