Software engineers and developers are responsible for producing high-quality and functional computer systems and applications. Many developers use Agile project management to meet project goals and stay at optimal efficiency. The Agile Scrum structure uses sprints, or smaller time increments, to break up projects into more manageable pieces and to deliver small increments of products, building value over time.
One way to track and even predict progress in an Agile structure is with sprint velocity. You can use the measurement to plan more accurately and stay on track with deadlines, while avoiding over-commitments that cause stress within the team, can negatively impact product quality, and can shake the confidence of the stakeholders.
Read on to learn more about sprint velocity and its importance for businesses.
Sprint velocity is a metric that measures a development team’s productivity within a sprint. In Agile project management, sprints are short developmental phases that break projects down into quantifiable pieces, typically lasting one to four weeks. Once you complete a single sprint, you adjust the scope of the next one based on performance success.
Sprint velocity is an essential tool for tracking your team’s progress throughout different projects and tasks. The metric reveals your team’s work output and the time needed to meet those accomplishments. Measuring sprint velocity allows you to keep track of typical activity and can be leveraged in many ways.
Sprint velocity is an essential tool for tracking your team’s progress throughout different projects and tasks. The metric reveals your team’s work output and the time needed to meet those accomplishments, allowing you to keep track of typical activity and establish trends. Additional benefits of tracking sprint velocity include:
Sprint velocity provides a reliable way to view your team’s ability and performance levels. You can use sprint velocity metrics to plan sprints more effectively. Since the amount of work a team can commit to completing will vary from sprint to sprint due to factors like holidays and planned leave, velocity represents the maximum commitment to make. Reaching that velocity number is not a goal of sprint planning. Instead, allow the team’s actual performance to drive the velocity. This is the path for setting realistic deadlines that meet your team’s needs.
For instance, if you notice an improved velocity over several iterations, it could mean that the team’s efficiency is improved due to process changes. A decreased velocity might mean that inefficiencies are creeping into the team’s processes. You should lessen work amounts until the causes are understood and removed, as indicated again by the velocity. That way, you can maintain high-quality work at a predictable pace, while avoiding over-committing.
Sprint velocity can also make communication easier between you and stakeholders. You can provide more accurate timeframes for specific tasks based on data-driven reports. It is now possible to estimate how changes to project scope and priorities will impact the delivery timeframes for a feature or task, based on where it lands in the product backlog.
Consistent sprint velocity checks give you more insight into your team’s efficiency. You can catch performance dips and address them before they grow more significant. In addition, you can identify other factors that might impede efficiency. For instance, the holiday season might cause a decrease in productivity, or new employees might be unable to meet the same performance standards. Velocity software development can also assist with visibility.
The basic math equation to determine sprint velocity for a given timeframe is:
Howerver, it’s important to note that velocity is a trending metric. The above equation assumes that a team can break down large tasks into small ones, all about the same size. Most teams are not able to break down work into such similarly-sized pieces. Those teams can use the following factors to quantify work.
Many Agile users use story points to estimate the effort to complete tasks and items. These metrics can vary depending on the work complexity, work amount, or other uncertainties surrounding the task. The story point scale leverages the Fibonacci sequence so well-understood tasks can receive a small and accurate story point estimate. In contrast, very large and less understood tasks receive a huge estimate on purpose, as a risk reduction effort.
For instance, a quick task might only be worth one point, while a more complicated one is worth eight story points, or about eight times the effort needed to work one story point. We could write an entire article just on the power of story points and the many benefits they provide. However, we also recognize that some teams struggle with them and prefer to use hours or days.
It is possible to use hour estimates to determine velocity. However, this method is likely to produce a velocity with less fidelity than using story points — unless the team plans to decompose all large tasks in the product backlog into smaller ones that are understood well enough to estimate accurately in hours. This method still provides benefits in terms of understanding how many hours a team can realistically devote to project work in any given timeframe to prevent over-committing again.
To prevent having to decompose all large tasks in the product backlog into smaller ones, teams might try to estimate in days of effort. A team might be able to approximate the story points method by limiting the “days of work” estimates to the same Fibonacci-based sequence: half day, one day, two days, three days, five days, eight days, thirteen days, etc.
The first step in a sprint velocity calculation is to add up the total estimates of all work items completed. Partially completed items do not count. Most teams start by adding up the total output from a few prior sprints, like these sample points:
Your total story points would be the sum of the three sprints:
Then, you would divide 129 by the total number of sprints, which is three in this example:
Your sprint velocity for this sample is 43.
The calculation isn’t a standard benchmark. Every team has a different number of people with different skills, experiences, and missions. Comparing the velocity of one team to another is meaningless. Due to differences in estimation methods, two teams doing the exact same work could (and likely will) devise a different velocity.
By definition, what is small and easy for one team (one story point) will be different than what another team considers small and easy (also one story point). By the same token, what is five times harder than that will also be different. This is an intentional aspect of the method. The point is that the actual number is not relevant. What is relevant is whether:
Similarly, if you used a different quantifier, like hours, your final measurement would look different than the above example. As long as the team can achieve the above benefits, the method used is not important.
Sprint velocity is a measure of average output. When you measure your sprint velocity regularly, you’re able to make estimates for how long future projects will take for that team. For example, a project worth 215 points total would take 5 sprints to complete if your velocity was 43, as it is above. The total amount of points, divided by velocity, is the number of sprints you’ll likely need to complete all of the work in a project.
Keep in mind that a different team will likely have different performance, so an adjustment should be made for the new team’s size and experience when compared to the first team
Sprint velocity is an estimation of work efficiency, not an exact number. Maintaining a specific velocity number is not a goal. Adding work to a sprint that exceeds the velocity to raise that number is the very definition of over-committing. It will inevitably result in the team making compromises in work quality.
Rather, the velocity represents the absolute maximum amount of work a team should commit to for an iteration, given perfect team attendance, well-understood tasking, and no emergencies. Keep in mind that if the team completes the entire commitment before the end of the iteration, work does not stop. The team simply accepts the next highest-priority item off the product backlog to work on.
You will experience velocity fluctuations. Fluctuations are normally caused by holidays, unexpected sick leave, operational emergencies, and unmitigated risks. Again, the actual number is not relevant. What we want to see is the team making improvements to their efficiency over time, gradually raising the number. Here are some strategies for improving sprint velocity.
Automating strenuous, time-consuming, and repetitive functions can boost your team’s overall productivity. Automation streamlines many work procedures while preventing errors, allowing team members to focus on higher-priority tasks instead. You might complete the committed work more quickly, enabling the team to also complete the next item off the product backlog, which raises your velocity score.
Your team members should have a thorough understanding of their workflows and tradecraft. Individual performance affects the team’s overall velocity, meaning that taking time to understand the sources of common errors and making changes to tool configurations, revising coding standards, and providing work aids to prevent errors will quickly pay for itself.
You can evaluate your team’s performance and identify areas that need improvement. Then, conduct training sessions to provide further guidance. Holding regular training ensures all team members are on the same page in terms of which practices are acceptable and which result in poor quality. The sessions also allow them to ask questions about procedures or voice concerns.
It’s also essential to regularly evaluate your team’s external obstacles and roadblocks. Many outside dependencies can harm your team’s velocity. Some of these external factors are outside of your control, like another department’s filing process or data security controls. You might be able to adjust other features, like slow servers or software that makes it more challenging to complete tasks. Defining work in ways that highlight these impediments and reporting them to leadership can help to resolve these external impacts.
It may seem obvious, but team turnover will have a direct impact on velocity. Losing a team member will decrease velocity. Adding a new team member will eventually raise velocity, but only after that new person learns the team’s processes and the new tradecraft. When a new team member is introduced, the rest of the team has the opportunity to reform itself with new dynamics.
Some of these changes can be mitigated by training, mentoring, and team-building activities, which also impose a performance impact. If you maintain the same team size and strategies during every sprint, it’s easier to identify sudden changes in velocity that warrant investigation.
Sprint velocity is a critical metric for your business’s performance in Agile. Regularly calculating sprint velocity for recent sets of iterations helps you keep track of your team’s performance and find areas for improvement. Contact Business Transformation Institute today to learn more about our Agile Development and Agile Training courses.