Team Velocity - Importance & Definition

Team Velocity - Importance & Definition

Importance of Team Velocity

Without team velocity you cannot adequately plan your sprints. What this usually causes is the team pulling too many stories from the backlog.

There are numerous problems with this:

• It makes it difficult to establish an accurate release plan
• It is demoralizing to the team to push stories the next sprint
• It destroys stakeholder trust in the teams ability to meet deadlines

Establishing team velocity allows for accurate release planning, understanding the weight of story to pull into each sprint, and maintains stakeholder confidence that the team can deliver.

Definition of Team Velocity

In Scrum, velocity is defined by how much product backlog effort a team can handle in one sprint. This can be estimated by viewing previous sprints, assuming the team composition and sprint duration are kept constant.

Once established, velocity can be used to plan projects and forecast release and product completion dates.