Velocity in Sprint
The traditional methodology of waterfall works in a more rigid way where products are intended to be delivered to clients with a heck lot of time consumption, maybe in a year or so. On the other hand, Agile revolutionized the software industry and promised to supply services in a very short amount of time.
Wikipedia defines Scrum as a framework for project management, with an initial emphasis on software development, although it has been used in other fields including research, sales, marketing, and advanced technologies. In short, scrum encourages teams to learn through experiences, self-organize while working on a problem, and reflect on their wins and losses to continuously improve.
What is Velocity in Sprint?
In general, two types of planning are extensively used in the scrum- Capacity driven planning and another is velocity-driven planning. Capacity-driven sprint planning depends on the commitment of the team to complete any task in the given time and a promise to deliver within those time limits. On the other hand, as we have discussed earlier, in velocity-driven planning, we use the estimation of time for doing a particular work in one sprint for future sprints.
During sprint planning, the velocity of a team is served as an input to the next sprint. They use this velocity data, evaluate and enhance its use in the scrum to deliver customer value. By evaluating its own velocity for the past several sprints, the team can gain knowledge on how the change in the particular process can affect the delivery of measurable customer value.
Steps involved in velocity-driven sprint planning in Scrum
- Having an understanding of the average velocity– Average velocity is defined as the number of tasks completed in a sprint. This plays a very vital role in velocity-driven planning, The team decides whether they would focus on the recent sprint or they would look forward to upcoming sprints.
- Knowing the product backlog– There are various items that are needed to be added in the sprint work from the backlog. Once the average velocity is estimated, the next step is to allocate those tasks in the sprint. Among the different things in the product backlog, the most important ones are prioritized and assigned accordingly.
- Having an idea about the tasks– It is very important to have proper knowledge about the tasks while planning. The tasks are further divided into sub-tasks and the work is then distributed efficiently in the sprint. This helps in understanding whether the sprint is full or if there is some space to add more items from the backlog.
Advantages Of Velocity
- Instead of taking an hour or two per week for the sprint, velocity-driven sprint planning is done in a matter of seconds.
- In this planning, the team takes into consideration the number of uncertainties and makes better planning in the future.
- Having a better idea about the release cycle in agile is going to be very beneficial for the project and with the velocity sprint planning, the team can know all the dependencies and flow while working on the user stories.
- The goals are more defined and hence help in increasing the efficiency of tasks in future sprints.
- It gives a measure of a team’s performance in a given sprint.
Conclusion
Thus we can conclude that velocity-driven sprint planning is becoming popular day by day because of its various advantages and is becoming the number one choice for scrum masters in today’s day.
