Basic use
How do I create a room?
From the home page, enter your name, choose your role and estimation scale, then create the room. Stimo generates a temporary room ready to share.
Do I need an account?
No. Rooms work through invitation links. Each person joins with a visible name and role, without creating an account or password.
How do I invite the team?
The organizer copies the room link and shares it through chat, calendar or video call. Anyone with the link can join while the room is available.
How long do rooms last?
Rooms are temporary and may expire automatically to keep the service lightweight. If a room no longer exists, create another one and share a new link.
Roles and participants
Which role should I choose?
Choose the role you estimate from: Developer, QA, UX or Other to vote; Scrum Master or Product Owner if you facilitate, prioritize or follow the session without estimating technical effort.
Why do Scrum Master and Product Owner observe?
They observe by default to reduce estimation bias. They can join the conversation, clarify context and help decisions, but they do not add effort to the result.
Can I change my role?
If you joined with the wrong role, leave the room and join again with the correct one. It is better to fix this before revealing results.
How many people should participate?
Invite people who have information or responsibility for the work. Too many people can slow the session; too few can hide important risks.
Voting
Are votes private?
Yes. Stimo keeps votes hidden until the organizer reveals the round. This helps each person estimate without group anchoring.
Can I change my vote?
Yes. While the round is open, you can select another card. Once the organizer reveals, the round is closed until a new one starts.
What are the ? and coffee cards for?
The ? card means key information is missing. Coffee means pause, blockage or clarification is needed. Neither participates in numeric calculation.
When should we run another round?
Run another round when discussion changes understanding, a new risk appears, spread is high or several people voted ?. There is no need to repeat if consensus is already good enough.
Results and estimation
What does the final estimate mean?
It is a consolidated reference to help the team decide. It does not replace team judgement or guarantee real duration; it summarizes the round input.
Why show median and average?
Median handles extreme votes better and often represents the center of agreement. Average helps detect tension or risk when it is far from the median.
Why are there role results?
Splitting by role shows where effort is: development, QA, UX or other work. It helps detect dependencies and avoids hiding a minority role inside a global average.
Which scale should I use?
Use Fibonacci when estimating relative complexity with uncertainty. Use days when the team needs approximate time. A consistent scale makes comparisons more useful.
Privacy and security
What data is stored?
Stimo needs entered names, roles, votes, reactions, room code and technical data required to run the session. Avoid writing sensitive information in names or rooms.
Do rooms appear in search engines?
They should not. Private rooms are marked noindex, excluded from the sitemap and blocked in robots.txt. Public help, FAQ and legal pages may be indexed.
Who can enter a room?
Anyone with the link can try to join. Share invitations only through suitable channels and create a new room if the link was shared outside the team.
Why are there ads and donations?
Stimo may use AdSense and Buy Me a Coffee to help sustain the service. These integrations can be disabled depending on environment configuration.
Common issues
The room is not updating in real time
Refresh the page and join again with the same link. If your network blocks WebSocket or your connection is unstable, participants, votes or results may lag.
The link says the room does not exist
It may have expired, been copied incorrectly or belong to another session. Ask the organizer to copy the link again or create a new room.
I cannot vote
Check your role. Scrum Master and Product Owner observe by default. If the round has already been revealed, wait for the organizer to start a new round.
How do I report a problem?
Write to admin@stimo.es explaining what you were trying to do, what you expected and what message or behavior you saw. Do not include confidential team information.
