Guide

1 · Basics & using BESTIMATE

Estimates buy you predictability, prioritisation and – often underrated – shared understanding: when two people rate the same story completely differently, they have different things in mind, and that discussion is the real value of the round. Teams mostly estimate relatively in story points – "about 8 points" is honest, "6.25 hours" fakes precision.

How a round works (planning poker)

Everyone picks simultaneously and hidden – that neutralises the anchoring effect and stops the loudest voice from dominating. The ancestor Wideband Delphi (anonymous rounds with a moderator) works the same way: the moderator joins as an observer, several rounds until the range narrows.

1. Present the story, clarify questions – no numbers yet.
2. Pick hidden – everyone at the same time.
3. Reveal together.
4. Let the outliers explain (highest and lowest card).
5. Estimate again – teams usually converge within a round or two.
6. Record the value – automatic in BESTIMATE's history.

Using BESTIMATE

• Create a room & invite: pick a deck (fixed for the room), share the 8-digit code, link or QR. Joining needs no account, names are optional («Bestimater 1, 2, …»), spectators pick the observer role.
• Estimate & reveal: votes stay hidden until revealed – via button, automatically once everyone has picked, or on a timer (30 seconds to 5 minutes). Then the room shows average, median, range and distribution; every round lands in the history. A reload doesn't kick you out.
• Lifetime: empty rooms are irrevocably deleted after 2 hours, every room ends after 48 hours at the latest (countdown from hour 46); numbers stay blocked for 7 days. No accounts, no tracking, no recovery.

Exporting the history

«Export history …» opens a dialog: pick rounds and formats – everything runs in the browser. Report (PDF): dashboard (consensus rate, agreement, ranges, most played cards) plus every round with its votes. Excel (CSV): one row per round with all metrics. Jira/Confluence: wiki-markup table ready to paste.

Tips & common pitfalls

• Keep reference stories – two or three calibration points get new team members up to speed in minutes.
• Outliers are gold – let min and max explain, never just average them away.
• Set a timebox – two rounds plus discussion, take the higher value when in doubt.
• No anchors up front – numbers only after the reveal.
• Don't convert points to hours – it destroys the point of relative estimation.
• An estimate ≠ a commitment – nailed-down teams only give you padded numbers.

2 · The Fibonacci scale

Most decks use the Fibonacci sequence (1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21 …) or its modified variant (0, ½, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 20, 40, 100). The growing gaps reflect growing uncertainty: whether something is a 2 or a 3 is worth discussing – whether it's a 20 or a 21 is not. Values from 13 upwards are less an estimate than a diagnosis: the story is too big and should be split.

Two special cards complete the deck: ? ("I'm missing information" – often the trigger for a spike) and ☕ ("break, please"). Both are legitimate, important answers.

3 · Fist of Five

Less an estimation method than a lightning-fast consensus check: everyone shows 0–5 fingers at the same time. 5 means "fully behind it", 3 "I can live with it", 0 "veto – we need to talk". Perfect for questions like "is this story ready?" or "do we commit to this sprint scope?". It is also widely used as a confidence vote: how confident are we that we will reach the sprint goal?

• 5 – full support · 4 – support with minor doubts · 3 – I can live with it
• 2 – serious concerns, discuss · 1 – strong objection · 0 – veto, stop

4 · T-shirt sizing

You estimate in sizes instead of numbers: XS to XXL. Nobody can do maths with letters – no averages, no false precision. That makes it ideal for early phases: roadmaps, epics, stakeholder discussions.

5 · Sequential 1–10

The most familiar scale of all – like grades. Great for quick gut checks and for teams new to estimating; the fine steps invite sham debates ("a 6 or a 7?") where Fibonacci deliberately leaves gaps.

6 · Powers of two

1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64 – every step doubles. That forces the one clear question "twice as big as that?" per card and prevents haggling over in-between values. Strong for rough architecture and epic estimates.

7 · Ideal days

The classic absolute scale: how many undisturbed working days would this take – no meetings, no interruptions? Easier for stakeholders to grasp than points, but it invites false precision and personal comparisons ("why do you need 3 days?"). Use it for time- and budget-driven planning, not for sprint velocity.

8 · Bucket system

Buckets with values (0, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 20, 30, 50, 100) lie on the board. One reference story is placed together, all others are sorted relative to it – towards the end in parallel with a short rationale. A team gets through 50–200 items in one to two hours – the first choice for large backlogs.

9 · Magic Estimation

The fastest method – and it happens mostly in silence: stories are distributed and assigned to a scale without discussion; afterwards everyone may silently move other people's cards. Only cards that keep moving back and forth get discussed briefly at the end. Perfect for the first pass over a whole backlog.

10 · Three-point estimation / PERT

From classic project management: instead of one value you give three – optimistic (O), most likely (M), pessimistic (P).

Suited for effort in time or money – quotes, fixed-price work, large single undertakings.

11 · #NoEstimates – not estimating at all?

The approach: slice stories as equally small as possible and simply measure throughput instead of estimating – forecasts come from historical data. This works well for settled teams with a stable flow, poorly for fixed-price quotes and new teams without history.

12 · Which method when?