Topic Teasers Vol. 24: Improving Agile Velocity
Is there a way to improve velocity of an agile team? There seems to be a lot of advice not to change estimates, overpromise and not to overwork team members. But sometimes there just needs to be a way to jump start productivity.
A. There is no sense in “falsifying” estimates to give the appearance that you will increase team velocity. It just moves you back to more traditional practices where you don’t meet the project timeline goals. Velocity cannot be improved.
B. Even though you don’t want to change estimates arrived at honestly, there are some team tune-ups that have a good chance to increase agile team velocity.
C. Since velocity is based on the performance of team members, if you reduce each person’s estimates by the square root of the velocity of the last iteration you will eliminate slack and increase motivation, resulting in increased velocity.
D. Add 15% to the velocity each sprint or iteration. That way the team slowly learns to work faster and the speed with which projects are completed will be affected positively.
Answer: B. Even though you don’t want to change estimates arrived at honestly, there are some team tune-ups that have a good chance to increase agile team velocity.
One of the joys of working on an agile team is that there is more protection from the traditional practice of
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