How to run planning poker with a remote team

Estimating alone is easy. Estimating together is where the value is: the conversation after the reveal shows what each person understood, and what nobody had thought about yet. That conversation is just as useful when the team is spread across cities, or time zones.

Here is a simple way to run it.

Before the session

• Make the tasks clear enough to discuss. A one-line title is fine, but someone should be able to answer "what does done look like?" in a sentence.
• Pick a deck the team understands. Fibonacci (1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13…) is the usual choice because the gaps grow with the size: it says "we are less sure about big things". If numbers feel too precise this early, use T-shirt sizes.
• Decide who is playing and who is only watching. People who join to follow along can be spectators: they see everything, but their vote does not count.

Step by step

1. Create a room and add your tasks, one by one or imported from your tracker.
2. Share the link. Teammates open it, type a name and they are in. Nobody needs an account.
3. Open the first task and give the team a minute to read it.
4. Everybody picks a card. Votes stay face down, so nobody anchors on the number someone else chose. You can see who has voted, never what.
5. Reveal together. All cards flip at once.
6. Talk about the outliers. If the votes are 3, 5 and 13, ask the person who chose 13 what they are worried about, and the person who chose 3 what they know that the others do not.
7. Vote again if the discussion changed anyone's mind, and accept the estimate the team converges on.

Tips that save time

• Use the timer. A round timer reveals the cards when it reaches zero, so one slow vote does not hold everyone up. Auto-reveal does the same as soon as everyone has voted.
• The ? card is a real answer. It means "I need more information". If several people play it, the task is not ready, and that is worth knowing before the sprint starts.
• Do not argue about the average. The number matters less than the agreement. If everyone agrees on a 5, move on; if the votes are far apart, that is where to spend the time.
• Keep the history. Every revealed round is saved with its votes, so you can look back at how the team estimated, and export it.

When the team cannot meet

If people are in very different time zones, a live session at an awkward hour is worse than no session. Read our post on live and async estimation for the alternative.