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Velocity

Last post 07:22 am May 23, 2014 by Anonymous
4 replies
Anonymous
06:22 pm May 22, 2014

Hi, I was watching the Evidence Based Management video lately and I noticed that they said that velocity isn't mandatory within Scrum. Its not even in the scrum guide.

My question is if we omit velocity, how does release and iteration planning gonna be done?


01:51 am May 23, 2014

Velocity is a quantifiable measure, but there's nothing in Scrum which says PBI's have to be estimated numerically. T-shirt sizes could be used for example.

During Sprint Planning, a team have to be satisfied that they can meet the Sprint Goal. This can be a qualitative decision based on collective experience of how much work can be taken on, rather than numbers.


01:51 am May 23, 2014

Velocity is a quantifiable measure, but there's nothing in Scrum which says PBI's have to be estimated numerically. T-shirt sizes could be used for example.

During Sprint Planning, a team have to be satisfied that they can meet the Sprint Goal. This can be a qualitative decision based on collective experience of how much work can be taken on, rather than numbers.


02:29 am May 23, 2014

Hello.

You can do iterationplanning by walking through the stories until the team does not feel comfortable anymore. I always recommend not to plan iterations based on velocity, just use it as one "verification" to get a feeling for the iteration and the progress.
We release every sprint, so releaseplanning = iterationplanning
But there is also no releaseplanning in scrum so there is also no need for velocity to do this "in scrum".


Anonymous
07:22 am May 23, 2014


Posted By Philipp Eisbacher on 23 May 2014 02:29 AM
Hello.

You can do iterationplanning by walking through the stories until the team does not feel comfortable anymore. I always recommend not to plan iterations based on velocity, just use it as one "verification" to get a feeling for the iteration and the progress.
We release every sprint, so releaseplanning = iterationplanning
But there is also no releaseplanning in scrum so there is also no need for velocity to do this "in scrum".


As the trainer said, what is not in the scrum guide doesn't mean that it is not needed. Could also mean that the focus wasn't on release management but it can still come...

However, I'm curious when you are dealing in a "Buyer & Seller" situation where the customer comes up with a list of PBI's how do you come up with a long term forecast?
Keep in mind that the customer can also go to your competition so if you can't give a forecast and your competitors can, then you lose the deal....

How would this go without tracking velocity?


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