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Overloading Planing Poker for Fist of Five

I was in a very fun Planning session today. The team was on their second sprint and the Scrum Master was using Mountain Goat's Planning Poker online tool.

After the team had selected a candidate list of stories into the sprint backlog and tasked them out they were ready for a commitment "ceremony."  The Scrum Master asked them to use the Planning Poker tool and overloaded the meaning of its story points with the fist of five (minus 4).  They voted using a new hand of Planning Poker on consensus of "We can commit to this Sprint Backlog of these stories."

I and the Product Owner were very surprised.  Overloading terms is perhaps very easy for testers and developers.  It worked, the team easily came to the understanding that they had consensus and were committed to the Sprint.

Now I just want to ask Mountain Goat for an enhancement to put in the Fist of Five tool or a switch on Planning Poker.

Free Agile & Scrum Tools for Planning and Prioritizing from Mountain Goat.


Related Post: Fist of Five - What does that mean?

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