Estimating Velocity
Velocity is a key factor in sprint planning, but what exactly does it refer to? Furthermore, how does a team estimate their velocity in a useful and accurate way?
What is Velocity?
In the context of Agile Software Development, velocity is the estimated number of story points that a given Scrum team can complete in an average sprint. Since user stories can vary in size and complexity, and story points are assigned based on that, measuring by story points rather than number of completed stories is a better representation of how much work a Scrum team can finish. A sprint can have many small stories or fewer large stories, and if the story points are within the velocity of the team, they should be able to complete both within the span of the sprint.
The benefit of velocity is that it allows Scrum teams to more accurately plan for a sprint. Without measuring velocity and knowing roughly how many story points a team can finish, they run the risk of committing too many or too few stories. If the team commits too few stories and finishes their work before the end of the sprint, they may be forced to schedule an emergency planning meeting and take more user stories from the backlog. This disrupts the flow of the sprint and ultimately reduces the amount of work that the team can accomplish. On the other hand, if the team commits to more user stories than they can successfully complete, stakeholders may expect a feature that has to be pushed back into a future sprint. Either way, both the team and stakeholders suffer when the team does not commit enough stories to fill up the sprint and finish everything that they commit.
Recommended Further Reading
The following materials may assist you in order to get the most out of this course: