How can you use velocity as a project control metric?

I disagree. Velocity alone is insufficient to identify bottlenecks or issues. Velocity is an average based on the number of work items completed. It changes from iteration to iteration. But it doesn't tell you why. You can get the why from - retrospectives - cycle time - lead time - burn down charts Once you know the why, you can work with the team to resolve any issues.

Velocity can be considered as one of the metrics that clearly exhibits sprint team has some issues that hinders the productivity, without doing any complex math. The cause could be anything, be it, environment, infra, unclear requirements, poor collaboration within scrum team, tech skillset. Then scrum master has to do closer retro to understand, identify root cause and unblock bottlenecks.

Velocity is a measure of how much a team can deliver in a sprint in a consistent way. It is expected that the velocity of a team will grow initially and stabilize once the team reaches agile maturity (normally in a performing phase) Any aberration in the velocity after that is a cause for retrospection as it means something is not right. But following are some of the key points which most people ignore 1. Velocity remains stable only when the other conditions are stable (ex. someone leaves, velocity may/should take a dip) 2. Goal of a performing team is not to increase velocity continuously but to keep it consistent. 3. Velocity is a macro-level indicator of team performance, not micro. It should always even out after a period of time.

In one of my Legacy to Agile transformation project, @initial sprint - team completes 7 user stories, each story being assigned a certain number of story points. Based on this, initial velocity is calculated as 7 story points. Next sprint, team sets a goal to complete 9 user stories. However, due to technical challenges and unexpected issues, only 6 user stories completed, resulting slightly lower velocity. With this data, we analyzed the trend and adjusted our planning and resources. Lower velocity continued in subsequent sprints which made us to review our practices, bottlenecks, and fix the issues affecting. We then discovered lot of external approvals, data gathering, client dependencies were causing maximum issues. We fixed those.

Generally we use story points to define team's velocity however this is a very vague and confusing if team and organization is not mature enough. Other way is to use hours for sprint/PI capacity and estimate project effort too in hours. over the period, team will get efficient and will take less hours to complete similar tasks considering reusability, expertise, team maturity etc. Velocity only tells how much team is producing which don't have any direct correlation with the business value. From a project metric perspective, Business value delivered is much better metrics instead of velocity. All user stories should be assigned a business value and measured to know team productivity.

It's inevitable to say that Velocity plays a pivotal role in forecasting delivery and scope in agile project management. By understanding the team's historical velocity—measured in story points or other relevant units—project managers can estimate how much work the team is likely to complete in future iterations. This allows for more accurate release and project planning. Monitoring velocity trends over time provides insights into the team's capacity and potential challenges, aiding in realistic scope adjustments. By leveraging velocity as a project control metric, teams can enhance their ability to forecast project timelines and make informed decisions regarding scope adjustments, ensuring a more predictable and successful project delivery

Think of velocity like your project's crystal ball—it helps you guess when things will be ready and how much you can squeeze in. Imagine your project as a story; velocity helps predict how many chapters (sprints) are left. It's a bit like planning a surprise party; adjust the guest list (scope) based on how much time you have (velocity). If your team works faster than expected, it's like getting a head start on the party preparations. Velocity is your time-traveling assistant, helping you shape the project story and deliver the good stuff to your audience sooner than they expected.

Velocity is a construct thought with a different purpose in mind: to plan sprints by aiding the team to understand how much they can realistically deliver (this is why sprints must be the same length, by the way). Using it to forecast is a bit of a stretch, and will come with a number of issues. The most obvious ones are: - assuming velocity is constant, which is not; and - assuming little changes to "what needs to be built", which requires a backlog that is good enough to estimate (basically waterfall), not to mention it undermines the premises of why you're doing SCRUM in the first place by contradicting principle #2. I then strongly recommend methods that are *actually* designed for that (e.g. Monte Carlo simulation).

Según mi experiencia, que se considere la velocidad del equipo como dato para hacer pronósticos del tiempo que le llevará a la célula entregar el proyecto, no es lo más adecuado, ya que primero, la velocidad no es una constante, se espera que el equipo pueda ir madurando, aprendiendo y mejorando sprint a sprint, y por ello en teoría: aumentar su velocity; segundo, para "estimar" todo el proyecto, debería contarse con el product backlog refinado, priorizado y completado, y bien sabemos que este es un artefacto vivo que puede sufrir modificaciones de acuerdos a los cambios y adaptaciones del negocio; y tercero, en la práctica influyen otras situaciones como: creación de historias técnicas, slicing de HU, dependencias externas, etc. etc.

You actually can't use velocity for this because new requirements emerge, some requirements turn out not to be needed after all, and if we apply the principle from the manifesto "simplicity -- maximise the amount of work NOT done", point the essential parts of each requirement souks actually be met (and we wouldn't know west that would be initially). In a complex environment, it is impossible to predict what we will actually end up developing.

I agree that velocity, and other agile tracking metrics, should be used with caution. If a team chooses to use velocity to keep an eye on their own progress, then that data should be tracked and used only by the team itself. It can offer valuable feedback when used by autonomous teams who hold themselves accountable. But, when management uses it to hold teams accountable, it can lead to sandbagging, micromanagement, wasted time and negativity.

In the project journey, think of velocity as your compass, helping you navigate changes and feedback. At the end of each sprint, it's like checking the map—learning from your team's performance to chart a better course next time. Velocity isn't a magic number; it's a dynamic guide influenced by various team factors. If a change or feedback shifts your speed, adjust your plan accordingly. But, remember, velocity isn't the sole indicator of success—it's part of a larger picture. Use it wisely, like a tool in your kit, combining it with other metrics for a full understanding of your project's health and performance. Adaptability is the key; velocity is your trusty sidekick in the ever-evolving adventure of project management.

We can use velocity for forecasting, adjusting, and continuously improving the team's performance. If in between any new change get in for future sprints, we can project the more effort required

In a real-life project, a web development team's velocity was impacted by a client's request for additional features in an e-commerce platform. Monitoring their velocity, they identified a slowdown and adjusted by reallocating resources and reprioritizing tasks. Despite these CRs, they managed to integrate the new features efficiently, without significant delays, maintaining client and user satisfaction. This example highlights how velocity can be a dynamic tool for adapting to project changes and feedback, ensuring goals are met effectively.

People need to stop mis-using story points and velocity. In fact, stop using story points at all. They are a terrible idea and we have uncovered better ways of working (and are still uncovering better ways).

Organizations need to stop using velocity as a project control metric. It doesn't represent any true value. Every team is different, each backlog is distinct in terms of complexity, skills can vary and stakeholders are different. The same velocity numbers for two teams can never be compared. There is no industry definition of story points or any other mechanisms to quantify the work. We should focus on the value derived as product deliverables.

If the scrum master and everyone else is too obsessed with the final X number velocity that got delivered in the sprint, we will end up with a team that focuses more on the number than the working software they were supposed to build. Chasing velocity in an agile project is a short-sighted metric to measure productivity. Instead, focus should be on business value created

La agilidad es muy importante pero jamás por ello se puede sacrificar la calidad. El camino de cualquier proyecto nos va mostrando distintos factores que pueden afectarla. En el sentido de las competencias para la agilidad del ser humano es preciso tener claros los factores de fluidez de las personas: conocimientos, capacidades, habilidades, recursos, herramientas y el trato que recibimos o nos damos. La agilidad no puede perder de vista lo humano sino hacerlo su aliado.

In my experience velocity can be used to measure the effort required for delivering the technical part of a project. But it should stop there. Delivery date of a project is not dependent solely upon the speed of the technical team. It’s actually an unfair assumption. In case true velocity is to be calculated to estimate project delivery it’s important to have a proper sprint plan and a sprint closure plan which accounts for time taken by project management, client, users, actual testing, approvals, sign-offs and every other non technical bit. This velocity which is the prediction of when a complete sprint may be called completed would be still a better metrics I believe in respect to predicting dates or other timelines at project level.