Planning Poker for Jira

Team backlog estimation inside Jira Cloud — user guide, privacy policy and support.

Game basics

Read this before you configure your first game. It covers the roles, the card decks, the estimation fields and the terms used throughout the interface.

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Terminology

The app uses the current Atlassian vocabulary:

Term in the app Means
Game One estimation session, with its own settings, backlog and participants
Work item A Jira issue
Space A Jira project
Backlog The list of work items added to a game

Roles

Roles are assigned by the person who creates the game, in step 1 of the wizard. Participants cannot change their own role.

Role Can vote Can do
Facilitator Yes Runs the game: selects the current work item, reveals the votes, starts the timer, saves the final estimate, edits the game, finishes and deletes it
Estimator Yes Picks a card, adds an optional note to the vote
Spectator No Watches the game; the card deck is not shown

Notes:


Card decks

Choose the deck in step 1. It defines the cards the estimators see.

Deck Cards
Fibonacci 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55
Mod. Fibonacci 0, ½, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 20, 40, 60, 100
T-shirt XXS, XS, S, M, L, XL, XXL
Time estimates 1h, 2h, 4h, 6h, 1d, 2d, 3d, 1w
Custom Your own values, separated by commas (at least 2)

Every preset deck also ends with two special cards:

Card Meaning
Too large to estimate
I need a break

Special cards behave like any other card in the room: they count towards Voted N/M, they appear in the distribution, and they can even come out as Most Votes. What they cannot do is reach Jira — they have no numeric value, so choosing one as the final estimate keeps it in the game and report only, and the room says so explicitly.


Estimation fields

The Estimation field decides where the final estimate is written in Jira.

Option Written to
Story point estimate The Story Points field of the work item
Original estimate Time tracking, as the original estimate, in hours

Which deck works with which field

Story Points is a numeric Jira field, so the app only offers numeric decks for it. The wizard enforces this: switching the estimation field to Story point estimate hides T-shirt and Time estimates, and resets the deck to Fibonacci if one of them was selected.

Estimation field Selectable decks
Story point estimate Fibonacci, Mod. Fibonacci, Custom
Original estimate Fibonacci, Mod. Fibonacci, T-shirt, Time estimates, Custom

How values are converted

Chosen card Story point estimate Original estimate
A number (5) 5 5h
A time card (2d) not offered 2d, as written
A T-shirt size not offered converted, then written in hours
or nothing written nothing written

T-shirt sizes are converted on this scale before the write:

XXS XS S M L XL XXL
0.5 1 2 3 5 8 13

After a successful save the room reports what actually reached Jira, for example wrote 3h to Jira (M → 3h).

Locked after the first save

Once any estimate has been saved in a game, the Card deck and the Estimation field are locked for that game. Changing them later would make the values already written to Jira mean something different.


Limits

Limit Value
Work items per game 500
Games listed on the Games screen 500 most recent
Work item summary stored in a game first 255 characters

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