Because stakeholders have an interest in the project, it is important to communicate with them regarding risks.

Information provided to stakeholders related to risk should include potential impact and the plans for

responding to each risk. This communication is on-going and should occur in parallel with the four sequential

steps discussed thus far—risk identification, assessment, prioritization and mitigation. The Scrum Team may

also discuss specific risks related to their Tasks with the Scrum Master during Daily Standup Meetings. The

Product Owner is responsible for the prioritization of risks and for communicating the prioritized list to the

Scrum Team. An important tool which can be used for communicating information related to risks is the Risk

Burndown Chart.

Planning Poker is an agile estimating and planning technique that is consensus based. To start a poker

planning session, the product owner or customer reads an agile user story or describes a feature to the

estimators.

Each estimator is holding a deck of Planning Poker cards with values like 0, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 20, 40 and 100,

which is the sequence we recommend. The values represent the number of story points, ideal days, or other

units in which the team estimates.

Takeuchi and Nonaka proposed that product development should not be like a sequential relay race, but

rather should be analogous to the game of rugby where the team works together, passing the ball back and

forth as they move as a unit down the field. The rugby concept of a “Scrum” (where a group of players form

together to restart the game) was introduced in this article to describe the authors’ proposal that product

development should involve “moving the Scrum downfield”.

Affinity estimation is a technique used to quickly estimate a large number of User Stories. Using sticky notes or

index cards or tape, the team places User Storied on a wall or other surface, in order from small to large. For

this, each team member begins with a subset or User Stories from the overall Prioritized Product Backlog to

place by relative size. This initial placement is done in silence. Once everyone has placed their User Stories

on the wall, the team reviews all the placements and may move User Stories around as appropriate. The

second part of the exercise involves discussion. Finally, the Product Owner will indicate some sizing

categories on the wall. These categories can be small, medium or large, or they may be numbered using story

point values to indicate relative size. The team will then move User Stories into these categories as the final

step in the process. Some key benefits of this approach are that the process is very transparent, visible to

everyone, and is easy to conduct.