Welcome to the part of Magic Estimations for Jira Cloud documentation, that covers estimation process details:

Estimation principles

As we mention in Magic Estimations app article, our app is made based on the Magic Estimation and Swimlane Sizing estimation games and estimation principles are inherited from it.

• The estimation process in Magic Estimations is organized around moving user story cards around the board, unlike standard Planning Poker where you vote for a specific Story Point value. It’s much easier for non-experienced teams to deal with such an approach rather than thinking of what Story Points mean.

• Board positions are determined by the relative weight of stories in comparison with other stories on the board. This is principle number 2. Try it and you will see how easy it is to compare stories located side by side and find a proper place for the one you’re estimating, even if you’re using lanes with standard Story Points values as labels.

• Final estimates are inherited from the lane values states the last principle. Once the stories are on the board, make sure lane values fit your team’s rules and click save - that’s it. The following chapters of this guide will cover this process in detail.

So frankly speaking, drag a user story card, find a suitable position for it, repeat the procedure with all the cards, and save estimated. That’s all it takes to estimate with Magic Estimations.

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Board modes

Magic Estimations app supports several distinctive estimation ways that we separated into 4 board modes: Classic, Poker, Async, and Relative. You can choose one of the modes from the session creation screen:

Open

The board mode can’t be changed from session settings. Let’s dig deeper into the details of every mode.

Classic mode

In Classic mode (or Classic Magic Estimation), you can place issues to the fixed number of preset labeled lanes. It means that you will be assigning a specific estimate that equals lane value to an issue by dragging it to the lane.

Collaborative turn-based game described here: Magic Estimation game process | Classic Magic Estimation mode

Open

In the example above, the MAG-226 issue is dragged from the backlog to the board. If released, it will be placed to the 3 Story Point lane and assigned a 3-story point estimate after saving session results.

Empty lanes on the right from filled lanes are hidden by default and shown only while dragging a card for your convenience. Empty lanes on the left from the filled lanes, like the “5” lane on the screenshot above, are always shown.

Poker mode

In Poker mode you can place issues to the fixed number of preset lanes using voting procedure.

Collaborative consensus-based game described here: Planning Poker game process | Poker mode overview

Async mode

In Async mode you can place issues to the fixed number of preset lanes asynchronously and set the final estimate together with an option to re-estimate interactively if the consensus is not reached. Async Poker game process

Relative mode

In the Relative mode (or Relative Magic Estimation), you place story cards to an infinite number of unlabeled lanes. Don’t think about the estimation values, focus on the relative weight!

Collaborative turn-based game described here: Magic Estimation game process | Relative Magic Estimation mode

Estimation details:

• place user stories from small ones on the left to big ones on the right

• create an infinite number of lanes

• create the lanes everywhere you need: left, right, or in between existing lanes

• group stories similar by the size

• once all stories are placed on the board, think of the estimation values for lanes and enter them as lane headers; by default, all lanes are labeled with question marks:

   

• click on Save estimates to finalize the estimates.

Board features

Issue details

We know how important is the ability to view and edit issue details while estimating or refining. That is why Magic Estimations supports Jira’s board-like experience with issue details: click on a card to open a dialog window, where you can observe and edit issue details. We were able to recreate the native Jira experience, so all issue fields are supported and displayed correctly.

While estimating you can also easily check issue details by clicking on the issue key on a card to open issue details in a new tab:

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Distribute issues option

Distribute already estimated issues from the backlog into the lanes for reference. The option works without any limits for Poker, Async and Classic game modes, but for the Relative Mode there are several conditions:

1. The distribution works similarly to the Fixed Lanes if the board is empty and has no created lanes. In this case, the app will create a lane for every estimation value of backlog issues. The created lanes will be labeled with the corresponding values.

2. In case there is at least one created lane, the option will distribute issues only to the created labeled lanes with corresponding.

It appears as the default action for the game moderator at the beginning of the game; it can also be found on the Board tab:

Pin issues / Reference issues

Game moderators can pin 1 issues in every column to draw participants' attention or to use it as a reference issue for the lane.

Hover over an issue and use Pin issue icon to pin or unpin it:

Highlight issues

Any participant can highlight an issue on the game board to bring attention to it. Pinned issues can’t be highlighted.

Hover over an issue and use Highlight issue icon to mark it with color and your avatar. Click on the avatar of the highlighted issue to remove the markup.

Moderators might need to press Option/Alt key to see the Highlight option if the Pin issue is still available in a particular lane:

Quick add issues and edit backlog

There are 3 ways for game moderators to edit backlog from an estimation game:

1. Edit backlog (shortcut: press B )
   Opens the main backlog editing panel similar to the one during game creation. You can add or remove issues, and update JQL for filtering.

2. Quick add issues
   Quickly add one or several issues by searching for them using the issue key or name.
   There is an option to create a new issue that will be automatically added to the game.

3. Quick remove issues
   Start dragging an issue card to see the issue removal drop area. The issue placed there will be removed from the game.

There is also a way for non-moderator participants to suggest issues for the moderator to be added to the game. Participants will see the “Suggest estimate” button with the plus icon instead of the moderator’s “Quick add”.

The moderator will see a note about suggested issues and will be able to accept or reject suggestions:

Reorder backlog

SImilarly to ordering in JQL, you can order issues in the game backlog using one or more fields.

Click on the Reorder backlog icon, find and select files for ordering, select ASC or DESC by clicking on arrows on the left from field names.

Lane change markers

In Classic and Relative game modes, participants can see how often an issue has changed its position on the board. Issues moved more times are highlighted more intensively, consider discussing their positions. Only positions changed during the Magic Estimations game are counted, changes by the moderator during game pause are not counted.

Also, participants can see who placed an issue to the current position by hovering over the Lane change marker. If it’s missing, the issue has been moved by the session moderator during the game pause:

Epic labels

All issues that belong to an epic will have an epic indicator on both backlog selector and estimation board.

By default only small space-saving color indicator will appear on the estimation board that will show the epic name on hover. Clicking on any epic indicator will switch epic mode to a full-size epic labels.

Saving estimates

Once you and your team are satisfied with the result on the board, click on Save estimates. The option is available as the primary button for moderator only session or if the session backlog is empty, or in the more actions list:

Click Proceed when you see the confirmation modal:

If everything goes well, you will see the success message, where Clear session leads to the session finish:

In case there are missing lane values in Relative Mode, the confirmation modal will change, and Highlight unestimated option will be added:

Click Highlight unestimated to see lanes to add values:

Errors while saving

There are several possible errors while saving estimates. Mostly they are connected to conflicts between the selected estimation field and project or issue type settings. In other words, there is nowhere to save the estimates. But don’t worry, it can be easily fixed.

If you see a screen similar to the screenshot above, please do the following:

1. If available, click on Fix it now to allow Magic Estimations to fix the settings problem

2. Follow the instructions

3. Try to save the estimates again

4. If it doesn’t help, check our guide explaining how to set up projects and screens to avoid Configuring estimation field and handling errors

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Estimation and backlog settings

Backlog settings

Clicking on the Select issues button from the lower part of Magic Estimation board will take you to the backlog edit screen.

Here you can filter and add or remove issues to/from the backlog. This functionality is described in detail in our guide of adding issues to the estimation session.

If you need support with JQL usage, check out JQL tips to master issue selection

Estimation settings

To open estimation settings click on the Session settings from the More actions menu:

Most of the options are similar to the initial configuration.

You can change Estimation field. Note that Magic Estimations app supports estimates of any numeric, time or text custom fields.

Time/Story Point switch. Switching between estimation fields that support time and story point values is available. Still, entered estimation values will be recalculated:

• Story Points ← → Hours

• Minutes below 60 → 0 Story Points

This is why you might need to reset estimation values for both settings of Fixed lanes or entered lane values for Relative Mode in case of time/Story Point switch.

Lane values are available if Classic or Poker mode is selected. You can easily configure them here by entering the values and using Enter key. By default, it suggests the Fibonacci sequence.

Time values. In case you are estimating effort in time, you can have estimates in minutes, days, or weeks. Type in values followed by:

• “m” or nothing to enter number of minutes: 30m

• “h” to enter number of hours: 3h

• “d” to enter number of days: 2d

• “w” to enter number of weeks: 5w

• the combination of the values above: 5w2d3h30m

• any other symbol will be considered as minutes: 10y → 10m

Time calculations. Magic Estimations will automatically recalculate minutes or days to the higher level period, for example, 60m are automatically replaced by 1h, 5d are replaced by 1w, and so on.

Note: automatic time recalculations depend on your Jira settings. For example, you can have 1d equal to 8h, 7h30m, 7h, and so on.

Board actions

Under the Dashboard from top right of the estimation board you can find the following board actions:

• Reset board clears the board placing all the issues in the backlog. We recommend using this option if you’d like to re-configure the board and its lanes.

• Finish and delete option removes the progress of the current session, finishes it, and returns you and all the active participants to the default Magic Estimations session management page.

• Distribute issues.

Context menu and bulk actions

Right-click or command+click on an issue card opens a context menu with available actions. The list of actions is bigger for game moderators compared to other participants.

Available actions include starting voting, moving to a lane or backlog, copying issue links or summaries, and removing issues from the game.

Additionally, use the Select option to activate the bulk actions mode. Once clicked, you can start selecting multiple issues on the board. After selecting target issues, activate the context menu for any of the selected items and choose the bulk action.

You can also select all the issues in the game backlog or in a lane through their context menu.

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On this page

Magic Estimations docs

• Magic Estimations overview