Getting Scrum teams off the “velocity” addiction cover image
Delivery Management

Getting Scrum teams off the “velocity” addiction

Exploring what can happen when teams get fixated on “velocity” metric, and lessons to avoid this anti-pattern.

Profile image of Willem-jan Ageling
Willem-jan Ageling
May 19, 2020 • 13 min read
4.62 (26)
Velocity
Leadership
Agile Leadership
Delivery Management
Process Optimization
Show more

Summary

Project management specialist Willem-Jan tells a story of a team that he led as a scrum master. The team got fixated on the velocity metric and later couldn't handle complex tasks. On the other hand, management thought that it was helping Willem and his team to get the backlog executed faster. The idea was if the team was self-improving, the velocity at which work is done should also increase. Willem then realized this just deviated the team further from the scrum goal. The episode covers the repercussions of getting fixated on the velocity metric and the lessons that Willem learned to offset the anti-pattern.

Takeaways

  • Let your team create a goal to achieve and you don't have to follow a plan that was developed at the beginning because things can change. Agile leadership focuses on faster feedback. Recovering from a mistake is a more powerful tool.
  • In The Scrum Pocket Guide by Gunther Verheyen, Willem-Jan found an explanation for Scrum that made things click. This led him to explore the ideas behind “complexity” and to start to understand why “the plan” wasn’t always the thing to follow.
  • Let go of a strict plan if you are planning a sprint because you can't predict what you are going to do or achieve and this narrows the creativity of your team as a scrum master.

Suggested Resources