Skip to main content
Tuesday, November 11, 2014 - 1:00pm - 4:30pm
Half-day Tutorials
TN

Techniques for Measuring Team Velocity NEW

The velocity metric is often misunderstood by teams and misused by management, resulting in increased levels of stress for everyone. Management wants velocity to increase while developers want time to craft the software well. The way a team defines velocity—explicitly or implicitly—can affect its ability to meet delivery commitments. Rob Myers explores the use of velocity as a planning tool, its misuse as a productivity metric, and alternative metrics. Learn effective ways to obtain consistent estimates, evaluate related ways to plan iterations and releases, and track progress. Realistic, non-technical group activities help explore and reinforce our analogies. Try out Steve Bockman’s Team Estimation Game and contrast that with Mike Cohn’s Planning Poker. Discuss how to handle vacations, meetings, and sick days. Learn what to do if the obvious answer to "Are we on schedule?" is "No.” Explore the latest trends, including a balanced examination of what it means to deliver value with “no estimates.”

Rob Myers, Agile Institute

Rob Myers is the founder of Agile Institute. He has twenty-eight years of professional experience on software development teams, and has been training and coaching organizations in Agile, Scrum, and Extreme Programming topics since 1998. He has recently worked with numerous organizations, from start-ups to Fortune 100 companies, helping them with cultural change and essential practices during their Agile transformations.

read more