Why is the Fibonacci series used in agile planning poker? [closed]

The Fibonacci series is just one example of an exponential estimation scale. The reason an exponential scale is used comes from Information Theory.

The information that we obtain out of estimation grows much slower than the precision of estimation. In fact it grows as a logarithmic function. This is the reason for the higher uncertainty for larger items.

Determining the most optimal base of the exponential scale (normalization) is difficult in practise. The base corresponding to the Fibonacci scale may or may not be optimal.

Here is a more detailed explanation of the mathematical justification: http://www.yakyma.com/2012/05/why-progressive-estimation-scale-is-so.html


Out of the first six numbers of the Fibonacci sequence, four are prime. This limits the possibilities to break down a task equally into smaller tasks to have multiple people work on it in parallel. Doing so could lead to the misconception that the speed of a task could scale proportionally with the number of people working on it. The 2^n series is most vulnerable to such a problem. The Fibonacci sequence in fact forces one to re-estimate the smaller tasks one by one.