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Planning poker in the Jira issue view

This feature is available on:

  • Jira Cloud (i.e. Jira sites with “….atlassian.net” in the URL)

  • Jira Data Center with app version 14.0.0+

Finding the Planning Poker tool

Cloud

The “Planning poker” button will show on the Jira issue view.

Click the button to show the Easy Agile Planning Poker panel between the Description fields and Activity section on the issue view for this issue.

The Jira Cloud issue view showing a button named Planning poker just under the issue summary

On smaller screens, the button might be shortened to the cards icon:

The Jira Cloud issue view showing a button with an icon of two playing cards just under the issue summary, and a tooltip saying Easy Agile Planning Poker

Note: Planning poker is only available in Jira Software projects, not Business projects or Jira Service Management projects.

Data Center

The planning poker tool is available within the Jira issue view

Scroll to find the Easy Agile Planning Poker panel between the Attachments field and Activity section of the issue view.

Easy Agile - Planning Poker Panel .png

You can expand and collapse the panel to show and hide Easy Agile Planning Poker as you need it.

Easy Agile Planning Poker Panel - Collapsed.png

A Jira Administrator can disable planning poker for a whole Jira Data Center site, which removes this panel.

Running planning poker as a team

The Planning Poker panel auto-updates, so you don’t need to refresh the page to see changes made by your teammates.

Vote

Add your estimate for how much work you think this issue will take. Each voting participant adds their estimate in the Jira Issue View. Cast votes may not be deleted but may be changed by submitting a new one to override your other vote.

Votes must be a positive numerical value between 1 - 1000, so your team may use your sequence of choice. For example, 1 to 5, Fibonacci, etc

Planning poker no votes.png

Easy Agile Planning Poker supports synchronous and asynchronous team estimation as there is no restriction on when a vote can be cast.

Any Jira user with permission to access and edit the Jira issue may cast a vote.

Reveal votes

You can see the profile picture for the teammates who have already voted. Everyone’s votes will be hidden at first

When everyone has submitted a vote, click “Reveal votes vote for everyone” to see all votes, sorted from lowest to highest.

Planning poker hidden votes.png

The avatars and votes will be re-ordered from lowest to highest for easy reference.

Any Jira user with permission to access and edit the Jira issue may reveal the votes.

Discuss

If all or most estimates match, your team has a shared understanding of the work and you’ve arrived at a good estimate. It is still a good idea to discuss any outliers just in case something has been identified that others have missed. This could make the work easier or more complex. Each person’s experience and capability will impact complexity.

If the votes aren’t matching, that indicates there might be something about this issue that not everyone understands yet. Is there a hidden complexity that only some people have spotted? Is it easier than it looks?

Planning poker revealed varied votes.png

If votes aren’t aligned, we recommend discussing the issue as a team and then re-voting. Use the “Clear all votes” button to clear everyone’s votes and try again after discussing.

Estimate

An Estimate is suggested for the issue based on the most commonly occurring votes determined in the following manner:

  • where there is only one vote that occurs more than once, this vote will be used

eg1.png
  • where there are multiple votes occurring multiple times, the vote with the most occurrences will be used

eg2.png
  • where there are multiple votes occurring multiple times with same number of occurrences, the higher number will be used.

eg3.png

Note: The story points field may be manually updated with the vote agreed by the team if that differs from the suggested estimate.

Add estimate to the issue

If there’s united or most-common estimate, use “Copy to issue’s Story Points” to save it to that field on the issue.

Planning poker revealed united votes.png

Troubleshooting Planning Poker

“Copy to issue’s Story Points” doesn’t work

If you receive the error message “issue was not updated” click on the message for more information on why the story points may not be updating. Find the error type below to for the recommended action.

Issue 1.png

Issue Type

Issue 2.png

This functionality requires the story points field to be visible in the Jira issue viewer and be editable by your user.

Recommended action is to speak to your Jira or project administrator to check these settings.

Issue 3.png

This error appears for issue types that don’t support estimation tracking, such as epics or higher level issue types. This typically occurs on company managed projects, however this will depend on your issue configuration.

Recommended action is to speak to your Jira or project administrator to verify your issue configuration.

Board and Issue Configuration

Issue 4.png

This is the default error for Atlassian Jira API errors.

Recommended action is to speak to your Jira or project administrator to validate that the project and issue configurations support story point estimation.

Unsupported Board Types

Issue 5.png

Currently the “Copy to story points” function is only supported on Scrum only boards (can be either team or company managed).

Recommended action is to switch board types if possible, or manually enter the value into the issue’s story points field.

Issue 6.png

This feature is not supported within Kanban projects, as Kanban frameworks generally do not support the idea of estimation.

Recommended action is to manually set the story points field if it is being used.

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