Bucket System
It is especially useful for estimating entire backlogs at the start of a project, when the sheer number of stories makes story-by-story planning poker impractical.
When to use it
- At the start of a project with a large backlog (more than 20–30 stories).
- When the team needs a high-level estimate of the total scope before planning sprints.
- As an alternative to Affinity Estimating when an explicit numerical scale is preferred.
How to apply it
- Prepare the buckets: cards with values are placed in a row, from smallest to largest. There is no need to include every intermediate number: you can use the Fibonacci sequence (1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89) and then round values such as 100, 200, and 500 for the largest stories.
- Calibrate with three stories: a team member picks a story at random, reads it aloud, and places it at the value 8 as a reference. Two more stories are read and positioned relative to the first one, adjusting if necessary. These three stories serve as the anchor for the scale.
- Distribute the rest: the remaining stories are divided among the team members. Each person individually places their stories in the bucket they consider appropriate, comparing them with those already placed. If someone receives a story from an area they are not familiar with, they can pass it to a teammate.
- Review as a group: the team reviews the combined result and discusses any stories that seem misplaced. The goal is consensus on the relative order, not precision in each value.
- Record: the number of stories in each bucket is noted down. This provides an estimate of the total size of the project.
Common mistake
Debating too much during the individual distribution. The Bucket System is fast because each person places their stories independently and simultaneously. If debate opens up story by story during that phase, the technique loses its main advantage over planning poker. Discussions should be saved for the group review phase, and only for stories where there is significant disagreement.
Resources
📄 Técnicas de estimación ágil: tres estrategias [Agile estimation techniques: three strategies, in Spanish]Scrum Manager Blog · Jul 2023
See also
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