What is it?
Someone developed this handy website for online Planning Poker sessions. Their website says it best “Online, virtual and co-located agile teams use this application during their planning/pointing sessions to effectively communicate points for stories.”
https://www.pointingpoker.com/
Pros:
- It’s FREE! It’s hard to be overly critical of a free tool right?
- You can set custom point values. this is useful if you want to simplify your backlog grooming discussions.
- It’s fast to setup a session and requires no authentication. In my opinion you want to spend as little time focused on getting into the tool as possible. No credentials or software = a breeze.
- Enables remote team members or distributed teams to work together.
- The timer is super useful for keeping on track. Until you press “Clear Votes” the timer keeps going.
Cons:
- The interface is a bit outdated.
- If you are concerned about security, this may not be the tool for you. While it’s not required to put sensitive or specific information on the site, all one needs is a session ID to see the contents of a session.
- You can make your name whatever you want when you join the session. Follow me on this one. Depending on your team’s sarcasam-o-meter you could see some interesting names join your session. 🙂 If you are trying to run a smooth session with multiple people it could be a little clunky until you figure out who’s who.
Conclusion:
I love the tool, and have yet to find anything that works as well as this. Well done!
Screenshots: