Fundamentals of a Session

What is a Session in Agility Poker Planning?

In Agility Poker Planning for Jira Cloud, a "session" is a dedicated time where team members engage in estimating the scope and complexity of tasks or backlog items in an Agile framework. This practice is integral to methodologies like Scrum.

Sessions in Agility Poker Planning involve team members assigning estimates to tasks using predefined scales (like Fibonacci numbers or Time Estimates). These sessions are crucial for gauging task difficulty, aiding in effective prioritization and planning.

Creating a session involves just three simple steps. For instance, the process for setting up an Interactive session is outlined below:

Estimation Values in Agility Poker Planning

In Agility Poker Planning, estimation values play a crucial role, helping teams quantify the effort for tasks or stories within Agile projects. Generally, story points are used, reflecting the task's relative complexity or effort. These points are assigned using a sequence similar to Fibonacci (1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21), promoting a more unified approach to estimating tasks.

Agility Poker Planning offers various options for estimation:

• Standard Fibonacci: Traditional sequence for story point estimation.

• Time Estimates: Allows estimation in time units (hours, days), offering a tangible measure of effort.

• Custom: Teams have the ability to modify the default Fibonacci sequence or time estimate values to better fit their specific needs. By selecting and adding new values to these defaults, teams can create a tailored set of estimation scales, ensuring a more personalized and effective estimation process.

Session Types in Agility Poker Planning

Agility Poker Planning offers two main types of estimation sessions: Public and Private.

• Public Sessions: Accessible to anyone with board and project access, these sessions allow broad participation. All Jira Software users can join and participate or observe. However, visibility of specific project, board, or issue data is still governed by Jira's access controls.

• Private Sessions: Access to these sessions is limited to invited users only, including roles like moderator, participant or observer. Each role has specific access privileges.

After a session concludes and the "Finish session" action is executed, joining or modifying the session is no longer possible.

User Roles in Agility Poker Planning

Agility Poker Planning incorporates the roles of moderator, participant, and observer. Each session can only have one designated moderator. Participants have the flexibility to switch roles between observer and participant at any time. Here's a breakdown:

• Moderator: Manages the session, selects Jira issues, controls voting, and can end the session. Moderators have comprehensive session access, including updating participant lists and configurations.

• Participants (Participant/Observer): Participants partake in voting under moderator guidance, while observers watch the process without contributing estimates.

• Jira Administrator: Can remove any session, but can't join a private session unless listed as a participant.