Simple Numbers
Simple Numbers (1–8) is the lowest-friction entry point to planning poker. There is no mathematical concept to explain, no questions about why Fibonacci skips from 3 to 5, no debate about what a 0.5 represents. Every number is one step above the last, and the range 1–8 covers the vast majority of stories a sprint team would estimate. The trade-off is real: a linear scale implies that a 3 is "a little more" than a 2, which does not capture the growing uncertainty that makes Fibonacci so useful. But for a team in their first quarter of agile estimation, calibration matters more than scale sophistication. Accuracy follows once the team has a shared vocabulary — the scale can always be upgraded later.
Cards: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8.
How to use Simple Numbers in planning poker
Start the first session by establishing a reference story at 3: something the team has built recently that took about half a day to a day for one person. Estimate everything else relative to that anchor. A 1 should feel trivial by comparison; an 8 should feel like "we probably should split this." After two or three sprints, review your estimates against actuals. If the team consistently lands stories in the 4–6 range with little spread, they may be ready for Fibonacci — the wider gaps in Fibonacci will give them more room to signal uncertainty on larger stories.
Example tasks and point mappings
1: Fix a broken link, correct a typo in a UI label. 2: Update copy on a static page, adjust a color or spacing in the design system. 3: Add input validation to an existing form, write a missing unit test suite for a function. 4: Add a new page using existing components and an existing API. 5: Build a new REST endpoint with request validation, business logic, and tests. 6: Integrate a third-party API (weather, payments, maps) end-to-end. 7: Add a new feature with uncertain design or unknown technical approach. 8: This story is too large — split it before estimating.
When to consider a different deck
Teams that track velocity over time and use it for sprint capacity planning: the linear scale does not reflect estimation uncertainty, so velocity numbers from Simple Numbers do not compare cleanly to teams using Fibonacci. Teams that regularly have wide vote spreads on the same story — those spreads often reflect genuine complexity differences that a wider scale (Fibonacci) would express more naturally.
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