
Gregory F. answered 11/28/19
PMP Exam Tutor and Project Management Consultant
The answer is yes if the following items are true;
1. Your references to client, project owner, and sponsor are synonyms for Product Owner (PO). The PO’s role is to clarify the developer's understanding of a user story by providing additional business insight, background, and specificity.
2. The client (PO) clearly understands that they cannot attempt to influence or control (i.e., bully) the developers in their questions, discussions, or estimates. Examples of bullying would include making statements such as; I need it by a specific date, the last team I worked with gave me smaller estimates, I can’t live with that number, I don’t agree with your explanation, etc.
3. The client (PO) clearly understands that they “own” the specification (i.e., user story), while the developers “own” the estimate. Therefore, if the client disagrees with the developers, the only remedy is to modify the user story (e.g., decompose into smaller pieces, provide additional clarification, alter the specification, etc.), and the team will give a new estimate for the revised user story.
4. The team trusts the client to represent the business in a knowledgeable fashion and without prejudice. The client trusts the team to provide their best unbiased professional estimates based on their experience and understanding.
5. The client and team understand that the purpose of estimating poker is to develop relative sizing’s of user stories, not hour estimates. Also, the estimates should not be construed as the final number for the remainder of the project. Estimating the backlog is an ongoing process, not a one-time event. Extended efforts to achieve unnecessary precision violates the law of diminishing returns without providing additional value. Planning poker is intended to keep the estimating process moving along, not get bogged down with extraneous (and often premature) details.
6. The value of planning poker is the power of discussion, collaboration, mutual understanding, collective ownership, and rapid convergence on a reasonable estimate.