Poker Planning Approach

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The dichotomy of amateur and professional is as old as poker itself. By its very nature, poker divides players into winners and losers. This is true in every hand, every session, every week, every month and over a player's entire lifetime. The existence of rake makes that divide even more severe. With the ever-shrinking pool of money to be won, the privilege of becoming a poker professional is reserved for a very small percentage of players. That's why proper attitude is of the highest importance.

1. Welcome to pointing poker (aka planning poker)!Online, virtual and co-located agile teams use this application during their planning/pointing sessions to effectively communicate points for stories.
2. Planning poker (also known as Scrum poker) is a consensus-based, gamified technique for estimating, mostly used to estimate effort or relative size of development goals in software development.
3. Poker planning is an estimation technique for agile teams that is used for calculating how much team resources should be allocated to complete a particular task from a product backlog. In planning poker every team member provides their own assessment of the task, and after a short discussion the team finds a consensus on the magnitude of the task.
4. PI Planning Goals The primary purpose of release (PI) planning is to gain alignment between business owners and program teams on a common, committed set of Program Objectives and Team Objectives for the next release (PI) time-box.

Many players mistake their proven (or perceived - which is much more often the case) winning track record for attaining the status of poker professional when the reality of the situation is a bit more complicated. Being a poker professional is not some sort of a lifetime achievement award or a checkbox to tick, it's a framework that allows us to achieve things in poker - or any other creative endeavor for that matter. A player with millions of dollars in poker winnings can still act like a total amateur on any given day, while a micro stakes grinder who's still developing his poker skill can do so in a professional manner.

It's Not About The Money

We've already mentioned the fact that becoming a poker professional isn't about the money. Money is the byproduct of going pro. There are plenty of pitfalls associated with being results oriented. Win rates in poker are very hard to quantify and our ego makes the process of quantifying them even more tricky.

We all know this. It doesn't mean that 'money' is some sort of a dirty word when it comes to poker. Ultimately, lifetime winnings are what separates the professionals from the wannabes. However, due to the volatile nature of poker, looking back at one's monetary gains should be framed as a privilege, not as a benchmark.

Resistance

If you've never heard about a book called 'The War of Art' by Steven Pressfield, you might want to grab a copy and spend a few evenings with it. It's a great read for anyone involved in a profession that requires a certain degree of creativity and poker certainly qualifies. One of the reasons why writing, painting or playing poker can bring one so much anxiety is the high level of uncertainty associated with these activities. Staring at a blank page with no guarantees about the quality of the words that we're about to fill it with (and about the feedback those words are going to receive) can be absolutely paralyzing. By the same token, firing up a few online poker tables can be insanely stressful given how even the most brilliant play can be 'rewarded' with a plummeting graph if we happen to find ourselves on the wrong side of variance.

This, in turn, leads to procrastination, laziness or - as Steven Pressfield calls it - resistance. Resistance is the force that prevents creative people from doing their work. It's a source of every writer's block and infrequent poker sessions, scattered throughout a very low volume mont. It's the reason why aimlessly browsing YouTube clips becomes so appealing right before we're about to begin our poker session. It's the reason why we fear the downswing well before it hits.

'The Professional'

'Great minds think alike' isn't exactly a statement that needs further reinforcement but the subject of professionalism as a remedy to resistance presents us with a great example of this phenomena. Both Steven Pressfield who's mainly concerned with the world of writing, and Tommy Angelo who's a very prominent poker thinker, present the same solution to the problem of resistance, which is 'turning pro'. For Tommy Angelo, the 'Professional' is an alter ego, a useful tool every poker player can use in moments when tilt or anxiety disrupt our decision-making process. This alter ego is a player whose sole motivation is making money playing poker.

Professional either turns a profit or dies trying and while this might seem like a really depressing proposition in the long-run, it's a great mindset to get into right before you start your poker session. Similarly, Pressfield’s 'turning pro' is recognizing resistance for what it is and acting against it. Professional is someone who knows that you don't wait to get inspired to play poker - you get inspired by playing it every day. Becoming a professional poker player is therefore simply a matter of overcoming the resistance that prevents us from playing poker.

It's easier to act your way into a new way of thinking than think your way into a new way of acting.” - Millard Fuller

So how do you 'turn pro' as a poker player? By winning a battle with resistance every single day. We've already mentioned that even a super successful player with millions of dollars in winnings can still act like an amateur on any given day if he succumbs to resistance. Turning pro is a lifetime commitment. We all know deep down what's good for us and we don't need a stack of self-help books to figure that out. Every time we decide to procrastinate instead of doing what we're supposed to (in this case - playing poker) we get this sinking feeling in our heart. Procrastination, the very thing that was supposed to bring us pleasure, leaves us feeling hollow if done at the expense of our true calling. Professional doesn't procrastinate, he doesn't wait for inspiration and he doesn't allow anxiety to dictate what he's going to do. The professional simply sits behind the desk and starts playing, every single day no matter what.

Lastly, it's important to point out that this approach is accessible to everyone, no matter your situation. You might have a full-time job and only a few hours each week to dedicate to poker.

Effective estimation is one of the toughest challenges software developers face in their jobs. Regardless of team size, they need to define, estimate, and distribute work throughout a team. As teams get larger, it becomes even more important to build good habits around planning and estimating work. Lack of planning and estimating reduce confidence in a program, breaks down relationships between the team and the business, and makes development harder on everyone.

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The Accuracy of Group vs. Individual Estimation

According to some study on the accuracy of estimation of effort between individual and group in an experiment for a software project. 20 software professionals from the same company individually estimated the work effort required to implement the same software development project. The participants had different background and roles and the software project had previously been implemented. After that, they formed five groups. Each group agreed on one estimation by discussing and combining of the knowledge among them.

Planning Poker Approach

Result – The estimates based on group discussions were more accurate than the individual estimates.

What is Planning Poker?

Planning poker (also known as Scrum poker) is a consensus-based, gamified technique for estimating, mostly used to estimate effort or relative size of development goals in software development.

Steps for Planning Poker

1. To start a poker planning session, the product owner or customer reads an agile user story or describes a feature to the estimators.
   For example:
   “Customer logs in to the reservation system”
   “Customer enters search criteria for a hotel reservation”
2. Team members of the group make estimates by playing numbered cards face-down to the table without revealing their estimate (Fibonacci values: 1,2,3,5,8,13,20,40)
3. Cards are simultaneously displayed
4. The estimates are then discussed and high and low estimates are explained
5. Repeat as needed until estimates converge

Poker Planning Approach Definition

By hiding the figures in this way, the group can avoid the cognitive bias of anchoring, where the first number spoken aloud sets a precedent for subsequent estimates.

Agile Estimation – Relative vs Absolute

Poker Planning Approach Strategies

An estimate is nothing more than a well educated guess. We use all the knowledge and experience at hand to make a guess about the amount of time it is going to take. So instead of looking at every new work item separately, why not compare it to previously finished work items? It’s easier for humans to relate to similar items than to guess the actual size of things anyway.

For example, is it closer to this really small thing? Or is it more like this normal sized item? Or is it really huge like that one piece of work we finished last month? Doing relative estimates will not only reduce the amount of time spent on estimating work, it will also heavily increase the accuracy of the estimates.

Our brain is not capable of doing absolute estimates; we always put that new thing that we need to estimate in relationship to things we already know.

Fibonacci sequence and Planning Poker

Planning Poker uses of the Fibonacci sequence to assign a point value to a feature or user story. The Fibonacci sequence is a mathematical series of numbers that was introduced in the 13th century and used to explain certain formative aspects of nature, such as the branching of trees. The series is generated by adding the two previous numbers together to get the next value in the sequence: 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, and so on.

For agile estimation purposes, some of the numbers have been changed, resulting in the following series: 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 20, 40, 100 as shown in the Figure below:

The Interpretation of the point assigned to a poker card is listed in the table below:

Point vs Hour Value in Estimation

So why use story points instead of time values? Story pointing allows the team to focus on the complexity and time involved in delivering a piece of work. The team compares the new work against work they’ve already done. They compare the complexity of the new assignment against past challenges and rank the difficulty as well as the time required.

For example, we don’t often account for “the cost of doing business.” Meetings, email, code reviews, etc. with time values. But in reality, all these are necessary practices throughout in our daily life, but don’t actually count as “work.” Story points isolate the software development work from the associated logistic work items, so estimates using point based should more consistent than hour base approach.

Poker Planning Approach Plan