Standardising Velocity in a Nexus team
I attended an interview recently for a Scrum Master position and this came up. The organisation has multiple Scrum teams and the interviewer wants my opinion on how best to have a standard Velocity across the team as a threshold. Just wondering if anyone has an idea of how this can be achieved if feasible.
Aligning velocity across teams is like aligning odometer readings on cars. All cars could show the same number of miles, but all gone in different directions and not reached their destination (goal). It isn’t the miles we care about, it is about all of the cars reaching the destination.
A Nexus should be focused on a Nexus Sprint Goal and integrating all work across teams to achieve it. The velocity of each team is irrelevant and alignment of velocity across teams is even less relevant. The question we want to ask is how best to align each team’s work to achieve product goals.
My response to that question would be the following.
- How do you measure velocity?
- Will the basis of that measurement be identical across all of the teams?
- Why would there be a need for a "standard" if all of the teams are successfully delivering the value that is needed?
Take for example something that has become a standard practice. Using Story Points to determine velocity. Story Points are estimates. Estimates are guesses made based upon the information known at the time of your guess. Guesses are not formulaic. They are the opinions of the people that are making the guess. So unless a single individual makes all of the guesses for all teams, there will be differences in the technique.
Another example is to use Throughput and Cycle Time. Those metrics are based upon the time it takes for a team to complete a unit of work. However, those units will be of different sizes across teams unless, again, a single individual creates all of the units. And even if that were true, the way a team works can impact those metrics. Do they pair? Do they have a lot of automation to help with the work?
Velocity, Throughput, Cycle Time are all very valuable metrics FOR THE TEAM THAT IS USING THEM. They serve no purpose to measure cross team.
interviewer wants my opinion on how best to have a standard Velocity across the team as a threshold. Just wondering if anyone has an idea of how this can be achieved if feasible.
If the interviewer was any good, he'd have been looking not for an answer, but at how you critiqued the question. Can you see why?
Thank you Ian, Daniel and Ryan. I learnt something great with your feedback.