Planning poker is a popular methodology employed to estimate the costs and effort for scrum goals so that project managers can arrive at a practical roadmap. According to this methodology, every team member must share their opinion on how long (or how much) a task would require, and the plan is a collective decision. However, team members cannot simply say their estimates out loud or share them privately – this could create a bias by arbitrarily imposing a baseline to calculate time and effort estimates. Planning poker solves this by using numbered cards that each team member must lay on the table, similar to a real-world poker game.
Team members can then show their cards simultaneously so that the scrum master has an honest idea of how long a task could take.
The PKR app by Texas-based software development company, Magnataur, allows you to conduct planning poker sessions in Microsoft Teams. Magnataur was founded in 2013 and specialises in SaaS products for security, compliance, and business agility. It also offers professional services, helping you achieve lean and waste-free business practices. PKR is the company’s ready-to-deploy SaaS product for scrum planning inside the Teams environment.
Magnataur launched PKR for Microsoft Teams in Q1 of 2021. Essentially, the app functions as a meeting extension so you can discuss specific features or issues in a Teams meeting. Your team members can respond with the digital equivalent of a planning poker card. Let us explore how the PKR app works in more detail.
Inside PKR for Microsoft Teams
To install PKR, visit Microsoft AppSource and look for PKR by Magnataur. You can also open the Teams application store and install the integration. This will add the PKR bot to your entire team, making it accessible to all team members. You can also add the app to a specific chat conversation without a global installation.
Here are the key features that you can expect with PKR for Teams:
- Execute a game of planning Poker – The PKR app works primarily through a chatbot interface. You can ask the bot to start a round of agile planning poker by typing @PKR followed by the begin command. The app will automatically send all team members a firm containing two questions – the estimated number of days and the degree of certainty, rated from 1-10. Team members can tell the bot how long they expect a task to take, and how certain they are that it will take that many days.
- Use PKR in Teams meetings – In addition to conducting planning pocket=r sessions in chat and channel conversations, you can also use the app for live games during a meeting. Type “@PKR begin” into the meeting chat window when you initiate a meeting. All meeting participants will receive a form where they can type in their estimate and certainty. You can also monitor the names of the team members who have participated.
- View planning poker history – At any given time, you can review the past sessions you have conducted using PKR. type in @PKR followed by “history” to view the results of the last ten poker sessions completed in that channel. You can narrow the results further by typing in the sub-command “last 5” or “last 20” to view the required number of planning poker records.
- Associate planning poker games with a project or task – The PKR app for Teams allows you to classify poker sessions with a title or text that indicates the project to which it belongs. For example, you can type in “@PKR begin ABCD” where ABCD is the feature number or a ticket number. This will allow team members to understand the topic under discussion quickly.
- Planning poker results analysis -This is the key feature enabled by the app. In addition to displaying each user’s unbiased estimates, it gives you the mean estimate for the entire team and the mean certainty, along with the average deviation.
Why the PKR App Makes a Difference
Planning poker is an excellent way to capture accurate estimation data before you begin a scrum. PKR lets you hold poker sessions with minimal effort and calculates the outcomes automatically.
What We Think
PKR is a useful addition to any agile Teams toolkit. It is purpose-built, easy to use, and can be installed completely free of cost.
Download the PKR app for Microsoft Teams here.
