This is the first in a series of guest posts by Brad Barton, Mark Ferraro, and Si Alhir, three transformation consultants with almost 75 years of combined experience coaching organizations with enterprise agility.
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Velocity is a core concept in the agile world. Velocity is a measure of a team’s “throughput” in a given timeframe (timebox, iteration, sprint, release, etc.).
For a collection of items a team is to deliver, the size of the items is estimated, the team’s throughput or velocity in delivering the items is measured (within a timeframe), and the duration the team is projected to deliver the items is derived. A team’s instantaneous velocity is its velocity for a given timeframe. A team’s average velocity is the average velocity over time (or multiple timeframes).
Velocity is not merely constant over time, but naturally fluctuates within some upper limit and lower limit, essentially, a velocity range, which can be represented using a control chart.
The range represents the degree of variation (of many “things”) within the team and around the team. A larger range indicates more variation and less predictability while a smaller range indicates less variation and more predictability. Exploring the causes of variation fosters a better understanding of how to reduce variation, increase predictability, and empowers the team to make more meaningful commitments to what it will deliver within a timebox.
Don’t overlook the power of using velocity ranges to hone your velocity!
[...] recently invited to contribute a guest post to Planbox’s blog where we briefly explored the power of velocity ranges and how this concept relates to variation, predictability, and making meaningful [...]