Everything you need to know about running scrum poker sessions with your agile team.
What is planning poker?
Planning poker is a consensus-based estimation technique used by agile teams to size user stories and tasks. Each team member privately picks a card representing their estimate, everyone reveals at once, and the team discusses any disagreements before agreeing on a final number. It is also known as scrum poker or agile poker, and is commonly used during sprint planning and backlog refinement.
Is scrum poker the same as planning poker?
Yes. Scrum poker, planning poker, and agile poker all refer to the same estimation technique. The different names exist because the practice is used across many agile frameworks — Scrum teams tend to call it scrum poker, while the broader agile community often calls it planning poker. Othecos Scrum Poker works for any of these workflows.
How does online planning poker work?
With Othecos Scrum Poker, a facilitator creates a room and shares the link with the team. Each voter picks a display name — no account required — and joins instantly. The facilitator announces a topic, everyone casts a vote privately, and the facilitator reveals whenever the team is ready (you do not have to wait for every vote). If the team disagrees, they discuss and revote. Once consensus is reached, the final estimate is recorded in the round history.
Which deck should I use for agile estimation?
The Fibonacci deck (0, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, plus unknown and break cards) is the most common choice for planning poker because its growing gaps discourage false precision on large stories. T-shirt sizes (XS through XXL) work well for early-stage estimation when the team is not ready to commit to numbers. Powers of 2 (0, 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, plus unknown and break cards) is a good fit for teams that think in doubling increments. Pro users can also create fully custom decks.
Do participants need to sign up to vote?
No. Creating a room requires a signed-in account; everyone else joins with just a display name and the room link, which keeps scrum poker sessions frictionless for guests, contractors, and cross-team collaborators.
Can we use this for remote sprint planning?
Yes — Othecos Scrum Poker was built for distributed agile teams. Votes sync in real time over WebSocket, so remote teams see who has voted the moment they vote, and reveal the results together. Pair it with your favorite video call and you have a full remote sprint planning setup.
How do you handle disagreement on an estimate?
When the team disagrees after revealing their votes, the facilitator can start a revote on the same topic with a single click. Every revote is tracked in the round history, so you can see how the estimate evolved as the discussion progressed — useful for retrospectives and for calibrating the team over time.
Is Othecos Scrum Poker free to use?
Yes. The free plan includes up to 10 active rooms, 5 participants per room, all standard decks, and 30 days of round history — enough for many small agile teams. The Pro plan adds unlimited rooms, 25 participants per room, custom decks, unlimited history, and CSV / Markdown / MCP exports.