The planning poker meeting
In Team O'clock you can hold a planning poker meeting with your team to estimate tasks you will be working on. You can start a planning poker session either directly in a Team O'clock browser tab, or:
- In your team's Slack channel
- In your team's Microsoft Teams channel
Checkout a tutorial video, read through the rest of the page for full details about the planning poker meeting.
Starting a planning poker meeting
To start a planning poker meeting in a browser you visit your Team O'clock dashboard page and click on the respecting button.
A popup will open where you choose the team that i going to have a planning poker meeting and hit Finish.
All team members will be notified via an email about the meeting and you will have a the meeting URL to join instantly.
The planning poker meeting page
The meeting page layout supports both synchronous and asynchronous estimation sessions.
When you visit the page you will see a header displaying the meeting type and team performing the meeting on the left, a list of team members that are currently in the meeting on the right along with a button to add a task for estimation.
A team member is assigned the meeting facilitator role and is responsible for adding tasks to estimate and showing the results on the voted tasks. The facilitator is marked with a grey outline in the list of members on the top right. Additionally, any team member can claim the facilitator role by using the three dots menu on the top right corner.
The main area of the page is the Voting area, where the tasks that require an estimate will be added in a list. Entering a planning poker session for the first time you will only see an input box already expanded, to write the first task that requires voting.
At the bottom of the page there is a footer with options for joining a video call with your team members to discuss about the meeting and a team chat, where you can exchange messages.
Performing a planning poker meeting
Using the planning poker meeting page you can have both synchronous and asynchronous voting, where members join at their own time to vote for tasks.
For starters you will need to add one or more tasks for voting. Doing so, a popup to add a task title will be shown and you can start typing. By hitting Enter or the Add task button the task is made available for voting. If you want to add more tasks for your team to vote click the Add one more button, to add the current task for voting and keep the input area open.
If you have installed the Team O'clock Jira integration you can type a Jira number in the popup and Team O'clock will retrieve the ticket name and link to display it in the meeting.
When a task is available for voting you and all other team members can place their votes. To place your vote simply select the card that represents your estimate. Doing so a green dot with a check mark appears under your avatar and the selected card is highlighted.
With AI-Assist enabled, when choosing a value you will see a section at the bottom of the task holding the latest 3 tasks that the team has voted with the same vote you have selected. This way you can have a more educated estimation.
Team O'clock offers some helping questions to clarify any fuzziness from tasks that need voting. These questions are accessible by hovering an active task and clicking on the text reading "Is the task ready for estimation?".
You can see if your team colleagues have voted by checking for a similar green dot with a check mark under their avatars.
All team members can change their vote, following the above steps, as long as the task results are not finalised.
When all team members have voted a task, the meeting facilitator can click the Show results button to conclude voting.
Voted tasks will display information about average vote among voting members and each individual member's vote, so that the team engage in further discussion. You will also see an alignment indicator as an emoticon. The closer team members vote to the average, the bigger the alignment
To navigate the tasks list there are two filters available on the top right corner of the list, one for the active tasks that you can still vote or update your vote, and a second to view the tasks you have already voted.
With AI-Assist enabled and voted tasks that have a big estimate, there is an option for the facilitator to get some suggestions for breaking down the task to smaller parts - that might be easier to work on. Voted tasks that fit this profile, will display a ribbon on top prompting for action.
The facilitator can click to expand that ribbon and get some AI-Assist generated suggestions for task breakdown. When presented with the suggestions, the facilitator can click on the "+" button next to each suggested task to add it in session for estimating.
Set active participants
The facilitator of a planning poker session can set some participants as non-active. This could be due to various reasons like an irrelevance to the current session, PTO, vacation, etc. To set active participants, the facilitator can click on the three dots menu and choose Set active participants.
Setting participants as inactive will remove them from the list of people that are voting the tasks added.
Reordering tasks in list
The facilitator can reorder the tasks in the list by dragging and dropping in the required position. All changes are instantly available to all members in the planning poker session.
Revoting an existing task
To revote a task that is complete, the facilitator needs to click on the "Revote" link displayed on the bottom right of every completed task.
Revoting a task, you will lose all previous votes and maintain a single entry in the planning poker session log, the latest.
Updating vote values
The facilitator can update the planning poker values used on estimates by using the respecting option on the three dots menu, on the top right corner of the page.
Clicking Set vote values a popup will appear where you can set the planning poker values or choose among some available presets.
You can add text as planning poker values using mapping, for example to set values as T-Shirt sizes you should write them down as:
2=XS,3=S,5=M,8=L,13=XL,20=XXL
2=XS,3=S,5=M,8=L,13=XL,20=XXL
Ending a session
To conclude a planning poker session, click the End session link on the header.
Inviting more members in the session
The meeting facilitator can invite more members in the session by clicking the avatar with the "+" icon in the members list, on the top right of the header section.
You can either invite a member of your team that has already an account on Team O'clock, or invite a colleague via email.
Setting or changing video call URL
To use a video conference with your remotees you can setup a Video Call Link from the options dropdown on the left of the main button.
This input is available to all your team members and anyone can setup the Video Call URL. You can type and use any video service you are already using.
To access the setup Video Call URL use the link displayed in the middle on the bottom of the page.
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