Creating New JIRA Planning Poker Session

To create a new estimation session, follow those steps:

Click on Planning Poker button in the top navigation

Image Removed

Click New Game button – a new session will appear in the list

Image Removed

Fill in all the needed data in the form

Image Removed

• Game name (1) is self-explanatory
• Select field to which estimates should be exported (2) - either added as a new comment, or set to the Story Points field
• Game description (3) is self-explanatory
• Import initial set of issues by label (4).
  This is not necessary, because you can always specify a key of the issue you’d like to estimate.
  On the other hand, it is quite convenient to have the whole set of issues at hand.
• Click Submit (5)
• Click Join at the desired game session:

Image Removed

Let your colleagues also Join the same session

Congratulations, everything is set!

Playing JIRA Planning Poker Session

Image Removed

This is how the game view looks like in Planning Poker 3.0.

Here is description of elements:

1. List of participants.
   Once someone joins planning poker session, he is automatically displayed in this list.
   Players who has made their turn are greyed and crossed out. Watchers are not displayed here.
2. Block of estimated issues.
   Shows the issue key and the assigned estimation point.
3. Current issue block.
   When clicking on the title – issue detail view is opened in the new window.
   It is also possible to show description by clicking on the Description button:
   Image Removed 
4. Issue description, author and recent comments are displayed. Click the same button again to hide this card.
5. Closed cards row.
   Here you can also see, who has played a card. All cards are closed until every player plays an estimation card (item (6) on screenshot).
   Game administrator (scrummaster) can open cards without waiting until every player makes a turn. This is useful when someone is lagging or if someone was disconnected, or in case of AFK.
6. Cards row. Once you pick a card – it appears in the cards row (4).

When everyone has played his card, all cards become open and the game view changes slightly:

Image Removed

As you can see:

1. The cards are open now
2. Statistics are shown
3. Control buttons are shown for the game administrator (scrummaster). Those control buttons are quite self-explanatory.
   You enter the decided estimation point and click on Set Estimation button. Upon that – the issue in JIRA is updated and you are presented with the new screen of next issue.
   In case the estimation range is big, it might require additional discussion. In this case you should press Replay button, and repeat until everyone agrees on the final estimation.

Planning Poker In Action