team estimation game
Agile techniques

The Team Estimation Game

The Team Estimation Game is a very powerful agile estimation technique that establishes relative sizing using story points. It was originally created by Steve Bockman and described in the book The Elements of Scrum.
This technique is faster than the well-known Planning Poker, has the same accuracy and is fun. Teams using this technique are typically able to estimate 20 to 60 stories in an hour.

Here is how one team plays the game:

Team Estimation Game Part I
Place your story cards in a pile on the table. Select the top card from this pile and place it in the middle of the playing surface (or stick it on a wall).

After placing the first card, each team member plays in turn doing one of the following:
- Play the top card from the pile as described above and places it to the right if it requires more effort to be completed than the other(s), to the left if it requires less effort, or under another card if the user stories are of about the same effort.
- Move a card already on the playing surface, declaring disagreement about its relative size.
- Pass.

First part of the play ends when there are no more cards in the pile and there is a general consensus on the ranking of the cards.

Note: During play, the players may talk about why cards are being moved or about what they think about size of the stories. Other team members may ask clarifying questions; they must not express their own opinions during another player’s turn. The goal is to get clarification and not to get too hung up on the exact sizes of the estimates. Remember that these are just rough estimates!

You can play the game also with a distributed team. Using a tool like Mural, you can simulate a blank wall and the players can shuffle around the User Stories sticky notes and the Fibonacci estimates, as shown in the pictures below.

Team Estimation Game Part II
In preparation for round two of game, produce a deck of Fibonacci cards (or a modified version of the Fibonacci series like the one in the pictures). Each card in this deck has one of the Fibonacci numbers on it.
The set of numbers includes only those in the Fibonacci sequence to reflect the general principle that risk increases geometrically in proportion to complexity.

The team now works together to assign points to each stack to indicate the size (level of effort) of stories that are in that stack.
Each team member plays in turn doing one of the following:
- Pick up a card with a number on it and places it on one of the columns.
- Use their turn to change a number assignment made by another team member.
- Pass.
This continues until a consensus is reached. When everyone feels confident enough in the sizes to pass on their turn, the part II is over.

Note: When you play it on your team, note that you don’t have to start with a “1” as your smallest story size. If a player thinks there may be future stories that will be significantly smaller than the smallest story that is currently on the playing surface (or on the wall), they may opt to start with the “2” or “3” above the first story instead of the one. This leaves room for future stories to be sized smaller than the smallest story in the current set.

At this point, the team moves the story cards to form columns under the Fibonacci cards. All the stories between the “1” and the “2” are collected in a single column under the “1” card; these are the one-point stories. The next column consists of all the two-point stories, and so on. As a result of the Team Estimation Game, we get an estimated package of stories, just like the one in the picture.

Give it a go, you won't regret it!