Value poker is a technique used in Scrum that helps teams make better decisions about what to work on. It is a way to get teams to weigh the benefits and risks of various options, and to make informed choices about which ones to pursue.
There are two main principles behind value poker. The first is that every decision has a cost and a benefit.
The second is that the benefits of a decision should outweigh the costs.
Using value poker can help teams make better decisions about what to work on.
For example, suppose you are the product owner for a software project. You have two options for features that you want to add to your product: A feature with a high cost and low benefit, or a feature with a low cost and high benefit.
It would be foolish to add the low-benefit feature, because it would likely take longer than it would take to add the high-benefit feature, and the end result would be poorer quality software. On the other hand, adding the high-benefit feature would likely result in much faster completion of the project, so it would be worth it.
Value poker can also help teams make better decisions about which features to release in a product version. Suppose you have three versions of your product: Version 1 has one high-benefit feature, Version 2 has two high-benefit features, and Version 3 has no high-benefit features. Which version should you release? The answer depends on how much each of the features in Version 1 and Version 2 costs (in terms of time, effort, and resources).
If Version 1 costs more than either of Version 2’s features combined, then it’s probably worth releasing Version 3 instead of either Version 2 or Version 1. If Version 1’s feature is less expensive than either of V2’s features combined, then releasing V3 is probably not worth it—you could release either Version 2 or V1 instead.
