Appendix A. Team Estimation Game

The Team Estimation Game (created by Steve Bockman) helps teams size features and stories based on relative complexity. It works because people find it easier to compare the complexity of one feature or story with another even if they do not yet know all aspects of that story. This game is fast, easy, and fun. It helps people avoid getting bogged down in too many details, which is always a risk during estimation exercises. Relative ranking gives the team the information they need to decide what to work on and how much to commit to in the current planning horizon.

Remember, estimates represent our best guesses about the effort required based on what we currently know. As we gain more experience, we will have more information and can then refine the estimates.

One good way to think of feature or story complexity is the degree of connectedness the feature or story has. This can indicate either how interconnected it is with itself or the number of connections to other features or stories.

Traditionally, this game is played at the iteration planning session to size stories for the next iteration. The game details are presented in Table A.1.

Table A.1 Team Estimation Game

Figure A.1 Moving cards in the team estimation game

Notes about the Game

When a story is going to be placed on the playing surface, and it is being compared to another story, ask, “Will this take about the same effort, significantly less effort, or significantly more effort?” In other words, don’t be too precise. If the effort is about same, just put it in the same column as the story you are comparing it to. If it is significantly less effort, put it to the left—significantly more effort, put it to the right. After all of the columns are done, you can then use the pseudo-Fibonacci sequence described in the table to size the effort. We chose these because each number in the sequence is significantly greater than the one before it without being so great that there is no continuum. The precision of these differences goes down as the numbers get larger.

We have found that Team Estimation is easier to learn, faster to do, and causes less bickering than Planning Poker for most teams who are new to Agile. We highly recommend trying it whether you’ve used other estimation methods or not.