Planning Poker® is a consensus-based estimating technique. Agile teams around the world use Planning Poker to estimate their product backlogs. Planning Poker can be used with story points, ideal days, or any other estimating unit.
Planning Poker is an agile estimating and planning technique that is consensus based. To start a poker planning session, the product owner or customer reads an agile user story or describes a feature to the estimators.
After a product owner reads an agile user story or describes a feature, its up to other participants to estimate the time of the task. Often the values are something like 0, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, etc.
Once the feature is discussed, estimators select a card to represent their estimate. These cards are then revealed at the same time.
If all estimators select the same value, that becomes the estimate. If not, the estimators discuss their estimates. Any outliers should especially be present in the discussion, justifying their own estimates.
The outliers justifying their estimates helps fill in gaps that may be missing. Both lower and higher outliers may have additional information and knowledge other team members do not. Or perhaps they lack knowledge/understanding of the problem. Either way, the generated discussion is often helpful for all participants.