Prioritize tasks with Priority Poker in airfocus

Watch: Priority Poker

How Priority Poker works

1. As an admin or editor, select "Extensions" and click on “Priority Poker”.
   
2. Create a game.
   
3. Name your game.
   
4. Click "Add items" to fill your rating backlog.
   
5. Select the items you want to play. Use the filters to narrow down what to include.
   
   
6. Invite other players to join your game. They can join by scanning the QR code on their smartphone or via a link (if they want to play on a desktop). You can determine which specific criteria a player can rate. In the example below, your sales director would not be allowed to rate the reach or impact criteria.
   
7. All players can start rating open items which are not locked by the game owner. The owner can also rate items (there is a “hide rating” option, enabled by default).
   
8. Let your players rate the items. The progress of each player will be displayed on top of the rating options. Players can signal that they’re done with their ratings by clicking “I’m done” (a checkmark will appear on their avatar). 
   
   As the game owner, you’ll see the option “Lock item & show results,” which can be initiated at any time.
   
9. Review and have the option to discuss the results so that you can set better priority ratings. 
   Your rating results show minimum/maximum ratings, an agreement value (low, medium, high), and a rating distribution chart. 
   
   The agreement gives you information about the statistical distribution of all the answers. The agreement metric is higher when your players’ responses are closer to each other on the scale. 
   
   airfocus will set a smart suggest rating (average of all ratings), which can directly be used for the prioritization or changed by the game owner before continuing the process. 
   
   Click on Show details to see how each player voted for the given item and criteria. 
   
   Set the ratings and complete the item.
   
10. Congratulations! Your team just completed rating the first item. Find all successfully played items in the “Prioritized” container.
    

How to host a live session

In some cases, such as in a prioritization meeting with your team leads or teammates, it makes more sense to play a live session to gain immediate results.

Whenever you want to play a live poker session in airfocus, you can either create a new poker game for your session or use one of your existing poker games.

1. Start the live session. You can always start a live poker session by clicking on your poker game name and selecting “Start live session”.
   
2. Notify other players. All invited players will get a notification when they're in the game that the game owner has started a live session. They can accept the invitation and join the game.
   
3. Start playing. After adding players and items, the game owner can click on one of the items to select them for the rating. 
   All the other players will now have the chance to rate this item. The selected item and the progress of each person will be displayed in real-time on all devices. 
   The game owner can “lock” the item as soon as he/she thinks enough people have rated and that all other extra ratings are not necessary at the moment.
   
4. Review the results. The results of the poker round can be displayed by clicking on “Lock item & show results”. The results will also be visible on everyone’s device. 
   
   The agreement gives you information about the statistical distribution of all the answers. The agreement metric is higher when your players’ responses are closer to each other on the scale. 
   
   airfocus will set a smart suggest rating (average of all ratings), which can directly be used for the prioritization or changed by the game owner before continuing the process. 
   
   Click on Show details to see how each player voted for the given item and criteria. 
   
   Set the ratings and complete the item.
   
5. Congratulations! You have completed your first item. Find all successfully played items in the “Prioritized” container.
   
6. Keep on playing. Use team wisdom to make better decisions.

How to take part in a live session

Priority Poker is a tool designed to prioritize projects, tasks, or products collaboratively with your colleagues, enabling you to bring expert knowledge to the table.

1. After you joined one of your existing poker games or accepted the invitation to a new poker game, the game owner can invite you to a priority poker “live session”.
   
2. After accepting the “live session” invitation within the poker game, you will be automatically directed to the items that the owner has chosen for rating (in real-time) and you can start playing. Rate the item's criteria that are displayed on your screen. 
   Your rating progress will be displayed for all players. You can see all currently logged-in players on top of the screen. Click on "I'm done" once you've finished rating. 
   
   
   The game owner can “lock” the item at any time. Once it's locked, you will no longer be able to rate this item
3. Review the results with your teammates. After the game owner closed the round, the results will be shown on everyone’s device and you can discuss them with your team members. 
   
   Click on the small arrow to see how each player has voted on these criteria. Your rating results show minimum/maximum ratings, an agreement value (low, medium, high), and a rating distribution chart. By default, airfocus sets a smart suggest rating (average).
   
4. Congratulations! You have completed your first item. Find all successfully played items in the “Prioritized” container.
   
5. That's it! Keep on playing and have fun prioritizing.

Who can join a Priority Poker game?

Any airfocus admin or editor can initiate or join a game. airfocus admins, editors, and contributors can join and play the game. Here's a table showing what admins, editors, and contributors can do when they have full access to a workspace.

Notes 
If a user is not invited, they can still see the game itself and the items in it, but will not be able to actively participate in it.

Which means: 

• seeing game - allowed
• clicking on it and seeing the contents - allowed
• But if the owner starts the actual game session for voting, joining the session is not allowed. 
• It's not possible to reopen items for ratings after they have been rated and locked. The admin can only reset or reopen them to overwrite the user ratings.

Priority Poker best practices

We implemented the Poker App following the best practices of agile poker, assuming that:

• Poker games are played in small teams
• After a round of voting, the admin and team analyse together whether everyone in the team has a common understanding and agreement on the complexity (or whatever target value of the voting). If someone has voted too high or too low, they need to convince others or be convinced to change their voting level
• After that, an admin resets the voting, and everyone votes again
• The process then gets repeated until everyone comes to a common agreement.

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