Free tool for Planning Poker to Estimate in Agile

Posted on June 19, 2012
Filed Under Tools | Leave a Comment

The best way we have seen to estimate in agile is by planning poker. Planning poker combines expert opinion, analogy, and wideband Delphi into an enjoyable approach to estimating user stories or epics into a reliable estimate. Participants in planning poker include all of the developers on the team that includes developers, testers, user experience designers, architects etc. At the start of planning poker, each estimator is given a deck of cards. Each card has one of the valid estimates written on it. Each estimator for example, be will be given a deck of cards that reads 0, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 20, 40, and 100. For each user story or theme to be estimated, a moderator reads the description. The moderator is usually the product owner or an analyst. The product owner answers any questions that the estimators have. After all questions are answered, each estimator privately selects a card representing his or her estimate. If estimates differ, the high and low estimators explain their estimates. Then steps repeat i.e the estimator do another round of estimation by privately selecting the card. This is continued until the estimates converge.

Mountain goat software has brought to you a simple and neat software that helps you do the planning poker activity and make estimation fun. Its an estimation tool that is fun to use and free. This free online tool lets distributed teams take advantage of Planning Poker, too.

Its completely free and requires only 4 fields to signup.

image Once you sign up and login, you can start the estimation exercise by Creating a new game.

image After you create a new game , you will have to first invite your estimators by sharing the URL in the side bar. In this example below, the game name is Android App.

Then you can start adding your user stories either in structures ( as shown below) or free form.

image Then your estimate and let the estimators play, estimate and plan.

image Click here for a free Sign up

Elevator Pitch – Identify Requirements in Agile

Posted on May 15, 2012
Filed Under Scrum Basics, Scrum Tutorial | Leave a Comment

One of the important things in identifying requirement is a good elevator pitch to differentiate the requirement from the existing available solutions instead of a “me too” situation.

A good elevator pitch will contain who is the target audience, what is the opportunity and how you differentiate your product. Here is how a typical elevator Pitch should be:

  • For ( target customer)
  • Who ( Statement of the need or opportunity )
  • the ( product name) is a (product category)
  • that ( key benefits, compelling reason to buy)
  • Unlike ( primary competitive alternative)
  • our product ( statement of primary differentiation)

The elevator pitch is often used to differentiate and identify the product requirements in a Agile type of environment. one the elevator pitch is articulated, the product owner along with the team expands the requirements further to create a product backlog.

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