Pointing poker for agile teams

Pointing poker is planning poker under another name: private votes, one reveal, an agreed story point. Run a free pointing poker session in your browser, no sign-up.

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Pointing poker is planning poker

Same round, different name. Pointing poker gets its name from the story point on the card: the team sizes an item, everyone plays a card privately, and the cards turn over together so nobody anchors on the loudest number. You will also see it written as poker planning or scrum poker, and planning poker is the name the technique was published under in 2002.

If you are new to it, the guide chapter on what planning poker is covers where it came from and when it is the wrong tool. For what the numbers actually mean, read what story points are.

How a pointing poker round runs

Three beats, repeated per item. The value is in the second and third.

Review the item

Read the story, check the acceptance criteria, and ask the questions that would change your number.

Point it privately

Everyone picks a card from the agreed scale. Cards stay hidden until the last person has voted.

Reveal and agree

All cards flip at once with a tally. Where the high and low cards disagree, that gap is the conversation worth having before you re-vote.

Start a free pointing poker session

When the estimate needs to outlive the session

The free room is enough to point a backlog today. When you want the number to stay useful, TeamRetro’s estimation keeps it with the work: pull items straight from your backlog, pick the deck your team already uses, and sync the agreed story points back to Jira, Linear or GitHub. Retrospectives, health checks and estimation sit in one place, so the sprint you plan and the sprint you review are the same record.

Start a free TeamRetro trialSee the free planning poker tool

Frequently asked questions

Is pointing poker the same as planning poker?
Yes. Pointing poker, poker planning and scrum poker all describe the same estimation round: the team reviews a backlog item, everyone picks a card privately, the cards are revealed together, and the spread is discussed until the estimate converges. The name changes with the team; the practice does not.
Why is it called pointing poker?
Because the number on the card is a story point, so teams talk about pointing the backlog. The poker part is literal: estimators play a card face down and turn it over at the same time, so nobody anchors on the first or loudest number.
What cards does a pointing poker deck use?
Most teams use a Fibonacci-style scale (1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13) because the gaps widen as the work gets less certain. Scrum, sequential, half-card, power-of-two and t-shirt-size decks are all in regular use, and TeamRetro ships each of them plus custom decks you set up once and reuse.
Do we need an account to run a pointing poker session?
No. The free planning poker room opens in the browser with no sign-up, and you can reuse the same room number for later sessions. You only need a TeamRetro account when you want estimates kept alongside your retrospectives, health checks and backlog.
Can pointing poker estimates go back into Jira?
Yes, with a TeamRetro estimation session. Import the issues you are planning from Jira, run the round, then sync the agreed story points back to the Jira issues. TeamRetro also imports from and syncs to Azure DevOps, GitHub and Linear.