Agile Story‑Point Estimation Illustrated Through a Card Game at a Large Bank

A large bank’s R&D center received a report that several employees were playing cards during work hours, which led the leadership to turn the incident into a teaching moment about agile estimation.

The team used a deck of 13 cards (or a mobile app when cards ran out) to estimate user stories during a sprint planning meeting. Each participant received a set of cards and, after the product owner or a designated reader presented a story, the team discussed its acceptance criteria with testing and development members.

Once everyone understood the story, each member privately selected a card representing their estimate, placed it face‑down, and later revealed all cards simultaneously after a count of three.

If the estimates differed, the team discussed the reasons for the variance, re‑estimated, and repeated the process until consensus was reached; after four rounds, the highest value would be taken if agreement still could not be achieved.

The cycle (steps 2‑6) was repeated for each story until all items were estimated. The team then used their velocity (previous sprint points or a reference value) to decide which stories to include in the upcoming iteration.

The article explains that story‑point estimation is not limited to any specific project type—it can be used in agile or traditional projects, especially for small‑batch requirements. Story points are unit‑less, relative measures that capture complexity, risk, uncertainty, and effort.

Relative estimation is illustrated with an example of estimating the time to write a 500‑word article by comparing it to past writing experiences and adjusting for difficulty, demonstrating how the team’s collective judgment yields a reasonable estimate without precise units.

Finally, the piece invites readers to explore more innovative agile practices being tried in the bank’s R&D center.