Team estimation game

The team estimation game is a method of backlog estimation where members of the team follow a set of rules to place user stories on a board and sort them by complexity. Those of the same complexity level are grouped together. When all the stories are on the board and everybody agrees on their relative positioning, the team assigns story points to every story and group.

The big advantage of this method over planning poker is its focus on the stories' compexity in relation to each other, rather than assigning story point values to each story individually.

When we made the switch to team estimation game, we had a tendency to group too many stories together during the sorting phase, which created problems during the story point assignment phase when it made more sense to assign different values to parts of a large group. To avoid this issue, try not to think in terms of the story points at all during the sorting phase. Form groups only when the stories are too similar to be differentiated, e.g. when they involve almost identical sets of actions. Several consecutive groups of stories can still be assigned the same story point value during the second phase of the game.

The team estimation game enabled us to reduce time spent on estimation sessions by more than a half, while keeping the estimations no less accurate than with planning poker.