Estimation Poker

I've spent most of this week as one of a small group working on estimating the next phase of a moderately large project.

We've been using a variation of planning poker to estimate the effort required to develop the various services and user interfaces that will be required.

In a lot of ways, I believe that planning poker is a worthwhile estimation technique - if you aren't currently using any formal estimation technique, I'd recommend that you have a go with planning poker.

That is, if you can convince your project manager that playing cards is a valid way to estimate. ;-)