Discerning estimate validity I've had experiences in the past where different developers will give different qualities of estimates--which then have to be consolidated into a single project plan--only with a twist. * One developer will look at a task, figure it sounds like an easy problem, and estimate a couple of hours. * Another developer will look at a task, figure it sounds easy, but recognize that there could be additional complexity or clarification along the way, so planning for contingencies, estimate a week. * A third developer doesn't want to do the task and in an effort to discourage its inclusion (or his assignment to it), will estimate a month. How does one go about discerning which estimates fall into which category? Do you just go by feel?

Planning Poker is one of the options and is a very easy way of giving an 'average' estimation of the task.

!Planning Poker Cards

It is explained on Wikipedia and a lot of other Web sites.

> Planning Poker is a consensus-based technique for estimating, mostly used to estimate effort or relative size of tasks in software development. It is a variation of the Wideband Delphi method. It is most commonly used in agile software development, in particular the Extreme Programming methodology.

What I found great advantages is that everybody that is included in this has his estimation, and the extremes, like the one in your question are automatically removed during short discussions among developers.

If an estimation should take a long time, or are done quickly, by doing planning poker you get an insight view thanks to the opinion of all developers in the room.