u/Tall_Difference_1670

Analysed 2,465 planning poker sessions — Fibonacci dominates at 84.5%, and other findings

We run a planning poker tool and published our first data analysis this week.

The Fibonacci finding surprised me least but confirmed what I suspected — the debate about estimation scales is basically over in practice. Teams just use Fibonacci.

A few other things from the data:

Thursday is peak day at 25% of sessions, Monday only 17%
84% of sessions never produce an estimate above 5 points
1 in 3 teams has one person who consistently votes differently from everyone else
Average session is 42 minutes

Does the Fibonacci dominance match your experience? Curious if anyone has successfully switched their team to a different scale and why.

u/Tall_Difference_1670 — 2 days ago

▲ 0 r/agile

We analysed 2,465 planning poker sessions — some findings surprised us

We run a planning poker tool and have been collecting anonymised session data for the past 6 months. Published our first analysis last week.

A few things that surprised us:

84% of sessions never produce an estimate above 5 points. The "planning poker is for complex uncertain work" framing in most agile books doesn't match how teams actually use it. Most teams use it to confirm small work is as small as it looks.

Thursday is peak day — not Monday. Only 17% of sessions happen on Monday. 25% happen on Thursday. Most teams have moved away from the sprint-start ceremony model entirely.

1 in 3 teams has a measurable outlier voter — someone who consistently estimates higher or lower than the rest of the team across sessions. Usually they're seeing something the others aren't.

75% of active teams run 3+ sessions per month — treating it as a continuous backlog habit rather than a bi-weekly ceremony.

Curious whether this matches what you see with your teams.

reddit.com

u/Tall_Difference_1670 — 3 days ago