Velocity
A measure of the amount of work a team completes during a sprint, used for planning.
Also known as: Team Velocity, Sprint Velocity
Category: Techniques
Tags: agile, scrum, metrics, planning, estimation, teams
Explanation
Velocity is a key metric in Scrum that measures how much work a team typically completes in a sprint, expressed in story points (or other estimation units). It's used for sprint planning and release forecasting.
Calculating velocity:
- Sum of story points for all completed items in a sprint
- Only count items that meet the Definition of Done
- Average over multiple sprints for reliability
Example:
- Sprint 1: 23 points completed
- Sprint 2: 27 points completed
- Sprint 3: 25 points completed
- Average velocity: 25 points
Using velocity for planning:
1. Sprint Planning - Team commits to approximately their average velocity
2. Release Planning - Estimate sprints needed for remaining backlog
3. Forecasting - Provide stakeholders with delivery projections
Important principles:
1. Team-specific - Never compare velocity between teams
2. Trends matter more than absolutes - Watch for sustained changes
3. Use ranges, not single numbers - Account for variation
4. Stabilizes over time - Early sprints are unreliable
5. Not a performance metric - Using it this way corrupts the data
Factors affecting velocity:
- Team composition changes
- Holidays, PTO, sick days
- Technical debt or infrastructure work
- Learning new technologies
- Process changes
- External dependencies
Velocity should be used as a planning tool, not a target. When teams are pressured to increase velocity, they often inflate estimates rather than work faster, making the metric meaningless.
For stable teams, yesterday's weather (using last sprint's velocity) is often the best predictor of next sprint's capacity.
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