My running notes on Scrum Team's Velocity

Just because you don’t understand it doesn’t mean it isn’t so” – Lemony Snicket

Understanding Scrum Team’s velocity is no less complex than interpreting our religious scriptures.

Even with enough shout out for Velocity, there still remain several opportunities to share insights and add perspectives on the same.

What is Velocity?

Let me take this opportunity to define the Scrum Team’s Velocity for one more time:

Velocity is the Scrum teams’ past ability to turn product backlog items into a ‘done’ product increment.

It starts with Scrum Team’s past ability. Ability to deliver something of value to the customers and business. Even though we talk much about delivering on time, being on time is seldom more important than delivering value.

Velocity helps very less in a complex domain where we have more unknowns than knowns. It is the uncertainty that rules the forecast and the vying predictive nature of the work environment.

Further, whatever we try doing drives us closer to prove some of our earlier assumptions go wrong. The only way to mitigate is not through Velocity improvement programs but through embracing uncertainty and learning as we perform.

What goes into Velocity?

“Velocity is calculated at the end of the Sprint by totalling the Story Points for all fully completed User Stories.” – ScrumInc

With this definition, it becomes inevitable to understand the attributes of Story Points for appreciating Velocity.

Story Points are about uncertainty, complexity, and risk that influence effort. Story Points helps in driving estimates without providing a specific time commitment, unlike effort estimates.

Story Points are about uncertainty, complexity, and risk that influence effort. Story Points helps in driving estimates without providing a specific time commitment, unlike effort estimates.

Story Points naturally embrace uncertainty and eliminate conversations around perfecting the forecasts made.

Remembering these factors around the Story Points helps us better position Scrum Teams’ Velocity in our team conversations.

What about sharing Velocity outside of the Scrum Team?

There is no need for sharing the Scrum Team’s Velocity outside of the Scrum Team. Given the nature of drawing past reference on their own ability to build a ‘Done’ product increment, it would make no sense to share this heuristic to the rest of the world for judgement and criticism.

“Scrum is founded on empirical process control theory or empiricism. Empiricism asserts that knowledge comes from experience and making decisions based on what is known.” – The Scrum Guide

The Scrum Guide talks about Empiricism as knowledge for the Scrum Team coming from their own experience. Similarly, the Scrum Team makes decisions based on what they know.

What about Velocity in Sports?

Let us take a look at Velocity in the field of sports for a better understanding of the intent.

Velocity in Soccer is the distance run by a player in the field but the value comes from their goals and respective match-wins.

In an attempt to explore the performance of football players, I found the following measures do come handy:

1. The total number of set pieces.
2. The total number of attacking corners.
3. Total number of free-kicks (on the attacking third zone)
4. Total number of counterattacks
5. The average duration of attacking play (from possession start to shot)
6. The average number of passes per goal.

Are we seeing anything as measure around the distance run?

Hope that should answer our question on what we can expect from Scrum Teams’ Velocity.

Wrap up!

Remember to focus on working to get better delivering value and not just getting better with Velocity.

If your team can consistently meet the Sprint Goal, stop worrying about your Velocity Improvement initiatives for heaven sake.