As more and more businesses embrace the possibilities unlocked by digital transformation, Leidit has continued leveraging its ServiceNow Certified Elite Partner status to keep our customers at the top of their game.
In a business climate in which mistakes and inaccuracies have never been more costly, ensuring that agile workflows run smoothly and information silos never get the chance to rise has put added pressure on scrum teams in every industry.
Our response? Leidit has introduced NowPoker, a ServiceNow Scrum Poker system, to our offering. NowPoker is a dynamic and high impact way for scrum teams and agile workers to minimize estimation errors in every project, using gamification techniques that emphasize clarity in communication and intelligent forward strategy.
Why use ServiceNow NowPoker
No business leader is looking to see projects, KPIs and deliverables delayed by erroneous information, nor by mistaking the time and energy required of a given task in the value chain.
Estimation from even seasoned specialists in a given field within a scrum – graphic designers, software programmers, cybersecurity pen testers, content creators and marketing leaders, to name a few – oftentimes misses the mark.
This is never through malicious intent or anyone trying to cheat the company of out timing and planning tasks effectively.
Simply, even the tightest organized scrum in an agile workflow faces unexpected delays and derailments – from urgent projects that need last minute turnarounds, to employee absences or shifts in the direction being undertaken by the business at large. With NowPoker, teams can better estimate the level of effort and timeline for agile projects.
How to play ServiceNow Scrum Poker
Experienced developers and scrum masters may have encountered scrum poker before – it’s otherwise known as planning poker. To ’play’ this gamified agile working activity, team members gather with stories to estimate the level of effort by assigning story points.
NowPoker and other planning poker games have the colleagues listening to these questions and answers hold up numbered cards to gauge the time, effort and other point values they believe go into that described work. In the case of NowPoker, this ServiceNow Scrum Poker system uses digital rather than physical cards.
The Scrum Master or moderator starts the story pointing session by enabling voting for a certain story. The story details are listed for everyone to read and to allow for any questions, answers and technical discussion.
Each player assigns points to the story, but cannot see others’ points. Once everybody completes their pointing (voting), the moderator completes (finishes) the voting by clicking a button and the results appear to everyone.
When numbers do not align, it’s clear a misunderstanding is in play. Here, colleagues are invited to drill down into the agile process and uncover what makes their suggested number wrong.
It’s not a blame game – just a question of understanding better who does what in your team. Has the amount of time it takes you to code and bug-squash a new web page been underestimated? Has your colleague misunderstood the complexity of a workflow? Are there complications in scripting that have been hidden and need digging in?
Cards to cultivate consensus
Each time numbers are not aligned in ScrumPoker, further conversation reveals back and forth why some work is harder, simpler, more streamlined or more complex than is being estimated.
As these discussions go on, each player on the team revises their score cards via NowPoker and displays it accordingly. Step by step, as communication flows through your agile team, you’ll find that a consensus in numbers is reached.
That consensus is key – it indicates that everyone in the team understands the challenges, timescales and potential for breakthroughs in a given component of any agile sprint.
If the team members don’t reach a consensus on the story points, an average is created by NowPoker which the moderator can round up to the closest Fibonacci number.
With ServiceNow Scrum Poker, you have an engaging and dynamic way of ensuring everyone’s voice is heard – and of ensuring those participants who lean towards the more domineering in scrum meetings give an equal chance for everyone to contribute their expertise.
Time to lay the cards on the table
At Leidit, we believe that a seamless experience is the key to smooth and effective digital transformation in every aspect of your business. With even the most determined agile scrum experts often hitting obstacles when estimating workloads and project deliverable timelines, NowPoker makes transparency king.
It’s fully integrated into your existing ServiceNow product too. NowPoker offers users the opportunity to create sessions in which planning poker games can be played – with stories from your agile modules easily transferring into those rooms.
NowPoker also offers users the ability to automatically revise scoring in real-time as stories are updated – and keeps a scoring history so you can evaluate how you are collectively improving at nailing accuracy over time.
Nobody’s asking you to throw down all your chips to get this game going, either. NowPoker is a completely free addition to the ServiceNow platform – meaning all you need to do is gather up your scrum master and agile teammates and sit around the table for a round or two.
Download and activate the NowPoker from the ServiceNow store now!
