Azure DevOps work items with Sprint Poker
The room starts with the Fibonacci deck and six sample work items numbered the way Azure Boards numbers them (#4812 and so on). Free: paste your items one per line as "#4812 Title" and each keeps its number. Pro ($29 once): drop the CSV you export from an Azure Boards query instead, and export ID, title and final estimate as CSV at the end.
- Type your name and press Enter, open the backlog panel and delete the sample items.
- Free: paste your work items one per line as "#4812 Retry transient failures". Pro: export a flat-list query with Export to CSV and drop the file; ID and Title columns are detected.
- Share the room link in your stand-up or refinement call. A free room seats 5 voters; the product owner and anyone else can join as spectators.
- Vote and reveal each item. The panel shows median, spread and the outliers to hear from before you settle the final value.
- Copy the session summary as text (free), or with Pro export the session CSV from the room menu, then copy each final value into Story Points or Effort.
What to know
Azure DevOps names the estimate field after the process template: Story Points in the Agile process, Effort in Scrum and Basic, and Size in CMMI. Planning poker works the same for all of them, because the cards are relative units. Use the Fibonacci deck for Story Points or Effort; if your team estimates Size as T-shirt sizes, switch the deck before you start.
For the Pro CSV import, export from a flat-list query rather than a tree or direct-links query. Tree queries export the title into several columns (Title 1, Title 2 and so on), one per level, and only the first one would be read. A flat list with ID, Work Item Type, Title and State is all the room needs; other columns are ignored. On the free plan, pasting "#ID Title" lines gives the same keys without a file.
Work item IDs are plain numbers, so they are stored as #4812. That keeps them recognisable in the room and in the summary, and with Pro in the session CSV and in the Calibration view, which can later match the same IDs with an export containing Activated Date and Closed Date to show how long each estimated item really took.
Sprint Poker is not an Azure DevOps extension and never connects to your organisation, so there is nothing to install from the Marketplace and no personal access token to create. The trade-off is that final values are not written back automatically: copy them from the summary, or use the Pro export that lists ID, title and final estimate side by side for a quick bulk edit.
Updated · Cosmovex
Questions
Is this an Azure DevOps Marketplace extension?
No. It runs in the browser. You paste work items, or with Pro import a CSV exported from an Azure Boards query. It never connects to your organisation and needs no access token.
Is the CSV import free?
No. Pasting work items one per line ("#4812 Title") is free. Importing an Azure Boards CSV file and exporting the session as CSV are part of Pro, $29 once for the facilitator.
Does it work with the Scrum process and its Effort field?
Yes. Vote with Fibonacci cards and copy the final value into Effort. The deck is just numbers; the field name does not matter to the room.
Why does my tree query import only top-level titles?
Tree queries export one Title column per level. Change the query type to a flat list of work items before exporting and every item will come through.
How many people can vote?
A free room seats 5 voters plus any number of spectators. With Pro the facilitator's rooms seat up to 1,000 voters and are kept 90 days instead of 7.
The free plan covers everything on this page. Sprint Poker Pro ($29, paid once) is described on the Sprint Poker page.
