Enjoyed Planning Poker for the first Time

Aha... Playing Card at office....Interesting... Playing Planning Poker also gave me a different experience. As a developer who sit in front of a computer every day, I enjoyed the relief I got to stay away from my desktop.

It's difficult to give estimations for software tasks accurately. It's more difficult to finish development tasks to the estimated time. The situation becomes more serious when the development methodology is traditional like waterfall model. In that case BA creates Requirement document, Architect design the system, Tech lead do the estimation and finally the developer(who was neglected at all above important scenarios) is going to implement the system. Is it fare to expect everything properly to be done on time by the developer in this situation? My answer is NO. BA create SRS and who can guarantee that developer grab everything what BA means? Tech lead gives the estimation to the tasks which comes to his mind and depending on his knowledge about the technology. Can't there be few important points or tasks that he missed? Can the technical knowledge of all developers in same level? Also who can guess developer use the same approach which was on tech lead's mind when he do the estimation. When consider all those things and some other non mentioned negative points, I really impressed with agile estimation methodology - Planning Poker.

It's just like a game among the project team on estimation process. Since all team members are participated to the process, all ideas are considered. A big advantage is developer get chances to know the real requirement at estimation process. since senior people are participating to the process it's a good chance to juniors to learn.

I'm not going to explain planning poker process here. If you are interested about knowing you can find lot of details from internet. Few links are given below.

http://planningpoker.com/detail.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planning_poker