Velocity
In this article we will cover two charts: Sprint velocity chart (for the whole team) and Sprint velocity by member.
Sprint velocity chart
This speed chart is used to assess the performance of Scrum teams and allows you to predict how long it will take to complete tasks from the backlog.
What is the Velocity metric?
Velocity is a measure of the amount of work a Scrum team can accomplish in a single sprint.
To measure the amount of work, Story points are usually used - a notation that a team assigns to a task, denoting its scope, complexity and duration. For example, a simple task has a difficulty of 1 SP, a more difficult task has 3 SP and so on. In FlowFast Story, points to tasks are written in the card Size field.
So, velocity is the sum of Story points for all fully completed tasks in the Sprint. It is calculated at the end of the sprint.
How do I read and understand the Sprint velocity chart?
The Y axis shows the task scores/size (Story points).
The X axis shows the sprints, each sprint has two columns.
The left column shows the scores of the tasks taken in the sprint (plan). That is, the sum of the scores of all the cards in the "Queue" and "In Progress" columns at the start of the sprint.
The right column shows the sum of the scores of the finished cards. That is, the cards that are in the "Done" column at the end of the sprint.
That is, by looking at this graph, you can estimate how much of the planned work has actually been completed over the time period.
Ideally, the final sprint performance should match the number of Story points planned for the Sprint, but in reality it is often different.
How to use Velocity?
For predictions:
Velocity is needed to predict how much work a team can do in one Sprint under similar conditions.
Knowing Velocity, you can determine how many sprints it will take for the team to release the finished product. This will help to plan the release date more accurately and understand whether the team is on track to meet the deadline based on numbers rather than intuitive assumptions.
To make a prediction, you need to calculate the average of the last few sprints (preferably from three). That is, to calculate the average of the right-hand columns of several sprints following each other.
To assess changes in processes:
By tracking its speed from sprint to sprint, the team will also be able to maintain its pace and measure how the changes made to the process have affected the team's performance.
If the team has changed the process in some way and the other conditions remain the same and the team's Speed has increased, then the innovation has worked well.
If the average speed decreases from sprint to sprint, it may mean that the team's workflow is no longer efficient.
Sprint velocity by member
This chart shows the contribution of each team member to the Sprint tasks.
The values are calculated as follows:
the size of each card completed per sprint is divided by the number its members;
and then these numbers are added together for each team member.
How to read and understand the Sprint velocity by member chart?
The Y axis shows the task scores (Story points).
Sprints are marked on the X axis.
Each column is a sprint. The coloured boxes show the amount of work accomplished by each individual worker in the sprint.
If a sprint involves tasks that have child cards, the graphs for the first level child tasks will be shown separately.