Estimates Game
The estimates game is a small utility that I built while working on a geographically distrubited team. I was the Tech lead and it was my responsibility to do sprint planning. In order to do that I needed to collect story point estimates from the team. I tried running estimation meetings in the "normal" SCRUM pattern however due to the team's large differences in timezones it was difficult to find a time which everyone could meet.
In order to find a possible solution I made a fairly traditional sprint estimation game with the major diffence being all of the players would vote asynchronously.
In a traditional sprint estimation game everyone would vote on the same story at the same time. If the estimates are very different, or there is an outlier, than the scrum master will work with the outliers to understand why they hold a different position than the group. The ultimate goal is to come to a consensus that the whole group agrees on. That point value is assigned to the story.
In the estimates game I built the goal is the same, to arrive at a consensus on the story point value. However, the mechanics of the game are different. All of the participants are given a list of stories to estimate and they estimate each story in any order they choose and at any time they choose. The game is played over a set period of time.
The game is built to keep everyone's estimates for a story hidden until everyone has voted for the story. Once everyone has voted for a story the estimates are revealed. This lets everyone do the "work" when it is convinient for them. It does however, have the drawback that the team does not get a chance to discuss the stories in with each other while the story is being voted on. There can be a lot of value in that exercise and it is definitely a shortcoming of this method.
Stack
- Laravel: API backend
- Front theme
- Vue.js components
- BoostrapVue theme
Features
A user can create a game and play anonymously. Copy and paste the peralink to re-open an anonymous session and restore active and in-aactive games.
Login to view current active games and to see past games.
After a game is created, add issues to the game. A link can be provided for the issue so that the details can easily be accessed in whatever issue tracking software the team is using.
The next step is to invite some players.
Use the invitation links invite the other players to the game. When the player follows the invitation link they will see all of the issues and will be able to cast a vote for each one. The other players votes will not be revealed untill all players have voted.
When all the players have voted and the story points have been recored the game can be closed to move it into the "archive" section.