Getting started with Pokerly

1. Open Pokerly

Once Pokerly is installed on your Jira Cloud site, open it from Apps → Pokerly in Jira.

You land in the lobby, which lists sessions in three groups:

• Live: sessions happening now. Join one to take part.
• Upcoming: sessions prepared ahead of time, with their queue ready to go.
• Completed: finished sessions and their final estimates.

2. Settings (for Jira admins)

Jira admins can always open Settings. Until session managers are appointed, Jira admins act as session managers.

Appoint session managers

Session managers run sessions: they reveal the cards and save the final estimate to Jira. Add the people who facilitate your refinement or planning meetings.

Appoint observers

Observers can join sessions and follow along, but can't vote. Useful for stakeholders who want to listen in. Everyone who isn't a manager or an observer is a participant and can vote.

Pick the default estimation field

Choose the Jira field Pokerly saves estimates to. You can use:

• Any number field, such as Story points or Story point estimate
• Original estimate (time tracking)
• A text field

You can override this default for an individual session.

3. Create a session

1. In the lobby, create a new session and give it a name. Add a description if it helps.
2. Choose the card template the team will vote with.
3. Keep the default estimation field, or pick a different one for this session.

You can create a session ahead of time as an upcoming session and build its queue before the meeting starts.

4. Build the queue

Add the issues you want to estimate in any of three ways:

• Search: start typing and pick issues from the type-ahead results.
• Filter builder: combine project, issue type, status, “without estimate” and text.
• JQL: paste or write a JQL query.

Reorder issues by dragging them, or focus an issue and press Alt + ↑ orAlt + ↓. During the session you can skip or remove an issue, re-estimate one, or send it back to the queue.

5. Vote

The current issue is highlighted for everyone in the session, with its full details on the same page: description, assignee, reporter, sprint, labels, parent and current estimate.

Discuss the issue, then pick a card. You can vote with the mouse or the keyboard. Votes stay private until the reveal, including from the session manager. Observers see the session but don't vote.

6. Reveal

When everyone has voted, the session manager reveals the cards. Everyone sees:

• The cards flipping over
• The average, median, agreement and range
• The vote distribution
• Whether the team reached consensus, and a suggested card

Cards without a value, such as ? and ☕, are left out of the statistics. If the votes are far apart, discuss and re-estimate the issue.

7. Save the estimate

1. The session manager picks the agreed card, or types a custom value.
2. They save it to Jira. The value is written to the session's estimation field.
3. The queue moves on to the next issue automatically.

8. Card templates

Pokerly includes four built-in templates:

• Fibonacci
• Modified Fibonacci
• T-shirt sizes
• Powers of 2

You can also create your own deck. Cards can carry a numeric value, which is how T-shirt sizes map to points. Cards without a value, like ? or ☕, can still be played but don't count towards the statistics.

9. Set up Insights

Estimation Insights compares your estimates with the actual effort. InSettings, choose how actual effort is measured:

• Time logged, optionally including time logged on sub-tasks.
• Cycle time between two statuses you choose, optionally counting weekdays only.

Estimates saved in Pokerly sessions are recorded per session and issue. The report then shows accuracy, team pace (hours per point), under- and over-estimated issues, rounds per issue, a chart of actual effort per estimate and a calibration table, with each issue listed as, for example, “Estimated: 5 points · Actual: 11h”.

Getting help

Something unclear or not working? Check the support page or emailcontact@umaylabs.com.