Mike Cohn's Blog

New Planning Poker Card Design

Agile Estimating & Planning

Blue Planning Poker Cards

I’ve wanted to update the design of our Planning Poker cards for quite awhile, and we finally got the chance. The new cards feature an all-new back design to go along with the same faces we’ve used for years. There are 56 cards in the deck. Thirteen estimating numbers are provided in four colors, each with a matching back as shown above. Additional cards include instructions on how to estimate with Planning Poker and feature full-color photos of goats on the back.

The cards are still the same high quality we’ve always provided. Our cards are manufactured by the same company that provides cards for Caesar’s Palace and other leading casinos. The cards come boxed as before although we’ve updated the art on the box cover–check out the leap of that goat!

Cards are for sale on our store. We will continue to sell our branded cards (like these) at our cost of $2.50 per deck. We also have unbranded cards for sale if you don’t want to see any goats anywhere. And we will continue to sell cards with the traditional goat photo backs as long as our inventory lasts.

Let me know what you think of the new design in the comments below.

Fan of Planning Poker Cards

Planning Poker Card box

About the Author

Mike Cohn is the founder of Mountain Goat Software, a process and project management consultancy that specializes in helping companies adopt and improve their use of Agile processes and techniques. He is the author of User Stories Applied for Agile Software Development, Agile Estimating and Planning, and Succeeding with Agile. Mike is a co-founder of the Agile Alliance. He is also a co-founder and current board member of the Scrum Alliance. He can be reached at mike@mountaingoatsoftware.com

8 Comments:

Bob Marshall said…

Nice-looking cards.

Sadly, Planning Poker is (literally) a huge waste of time compared to e.g. Ken North’s Silent Grouping technique (see my blog for more info).

HTH

- Bob

Mike Cohn said…

Hi Bob-
I believe you are referring to Ken Power rather than Ken North. That technique was first taught to me by Lowell Lindstrom many years ago at one of the first Scrum Gatherings. I do use the technique but it is nowhere near as good as Planning Poker at creating accurate estimates. It suffices when a huge backlog needs to be sorted but without discussion a lot is lot (in terms of estimate accuracy and in team understanding and in discovery of hidden assumptions about the work). The technique you are referring to is a variation of “Deal and Slide” documented by James Greening a few years ago on his blog. In my reply there you can see a description of what Lowell Lindstrom showed me and what I still use.

Gustavo Narea said…

They look really nice.

It’d be nice to have a cheaper shipping option for the UK. It isn’t very attractive to pay $27 in shipping for a product that costs $2.50.

Mike Cohn said…

Hi Gustavo—
I completely agree. We sell the cards at cost and charge actual shipping costs so there’s not much we can do, though. The problem is that 99% of the time we ship via something like US Postal Service, the cards get stuck in Customs in various countries or they are otherwise never delivered. We then end up shipping a replacement package paying for Fedex delivery ourselves. This has forced us to use only shipping methods that provide a tracking number and those are more costly. We’ve gone so far as to looking into establishing a European presence just to do this but then we end up paying all sorts of additional taxes in other countries and so that raises the cost in that way. If you have suggestions, we’re very open to them.

Kent Diprose said…

Great cards. Similar comment to Gustavo, shipping to Australia is expensive.
As for planning poker, everytime I introduce it, or observe it being introduced, you see light bulbs going on. It is a much more accurate estimation method.

Mike Cohn said…

Hi Kent—
Yes, unfortunately the shipping is expensive and always looks worse because the cards are so cheap. I’m glad you get the same reactions I do when introducing Planning Poker. Even for doing things like old-style task decomposition, it is a great way to create the estimates.

Erika Chestnut said…

Very cool. I just wish you would allow custom printing as well.

Mike Cohn said…

Thanks, Erika. Although we don’t print custom cards we can provide you with a royalty-free license agreement to print your own and can recommend a couple of printers that we know do good cards. (Printing playing cards is not something the corner print shop does well.)

Leave a Comment: