PlanningPoker

Planning Poker is a collaborative estimation technique used by agile teams to collectively estimate the effort required for a set of tasks. This open-source project provides a digital implementation of Planning Poker, allowing teams to streamline their estimation process.

PlanningPoker.mp4

Features

• User-friendly interface for team members to participate in the estimation process
• Throw paper balls and emojis at other players
• Shake the screen of other players
• Create and manage estimation sessions
• Estimation histogram/plot
• Real-time updates to ensure all team members are on the same page
• Dockerized
• Horizontally scalable backend
• Free for everyone, no ads

Prerequisites

• Docker (or Node.js 18+ and a Redis instance, for dev without Docker)

The backend requires a reachable Redis instance — it's where session and player state is stored. Every option below already provisions one for you except the no-Docker dev path, which you start yourself.

Self-Hosting

All three Docker-based options run docker compose, differ only in whether/how they front the app with Traefik, and all bring up a redis container automatically — no separate setup needed.

Without Docker (for development)

git clone https://github.com/LReg/PlanningPoker.git

Start a Redis instance the backend can reach — for example:

docker run -d --name planning-poker-redis -p 6379:6379 redis:7-alpine

Then, in one terminal:

cd backend
npm install
REDIS_URL=redis://localhost:6379 npm run start

And in a second terminal, for the frontend:

cd frontend
npm install
npm run dev

Open your browser at http://localhost:80.

Localhost Docker

git clone https://github.com/LReg/PlanningPoker.git

Change the .env file to your needs — see below — then:

docker compose up -d

Classic Docker

git clone https://github.com/LReg/PlanningPoker.git
cp .env.example .env

Change the .env file to your needs — see below — then:

docker compose up -d

Traefik + Docker

For hosting behind an existing Traefik reverse proxy on the same Docker host.

git clone https://github.com/LReg/PlanningPoker.git
cp .env.example.traefik .env

Change the .env file to your needs — see below — then:

docker compose -f traefik.docker-compose.yml up -d

This expects an external Docker network already created for your Traefik instance to route through (TRAEFIK_NETWORK below) — see Traefik's Docker provider docs if you don't have one yet.

Customize .env File

Variable	Meaning
DOMAIN	Your domain — needs to be changed to yours
PRODUCTION	Should stay true
PROTOCOL	http or https — used to build the backend URL in the frontend
BACKEND_PORT	Port the backend listens on
DEEPSEEK_API_KEY	DeepSeek API key for the optional AI chat commands (/ask, /estimation) — leave empty if you don't use these
DEEPSEEK_MODEL	DeepSeek model id, e.g. deepseek-chat
TRAEFIK	true appends /api to route the backend over the same domain as the frontend (used by the frontend)
TRAEFIK_CERT_RESOLVER	Needs to match your Traefik cert resolver
TRAEFIK_ENTRYPOINT	Name of your Traefik entrypoint
TRAEFIK_NETWORK	Name of your external Traefik Docker network
TRAEFIK_ROUTER	Name of the Traefik router — must be unique among your other Traefik services
CONTAINER_NAME	Name prefix for the Docker containers
IMAGE_NAME	Name prefix for the Docker images

Redis is intentionally not listed here — every Docker option above wires REDIS_URL to the redis service it starts for you automatically. You only need to set it yourself in the no-Docker dev path.

Drawbacks

The application is currently only available in German. Maybe some day I will translate it.