Topic Teasers Vol. 52: Calculating Agile Capacity

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  Agile   Estimating   Scrum  

After a recent conversion by my team regarding agile, we find that there is a mismatch between the number of hours we should have for working on stories and the amount of time we really have. So we are constantly over-committing to our Product Owner and not delivering. Where are we going wrong?

A. Traditional teams may have a 15-20% contingency cushion in time and cost on their project estimates. Routinely subtract a similar agile contingency from the number of backlog items you accept to make sure you finish all planned work within a single iteration.

B. Agile is expected to be flexible, and velocity can vary. Just complete what you can and adjust your velocity for the next sprint if you don’t finish all of the stories you committed to complete this time.

C. Be sure you are acknowledging hours that team members will spend in Scrum ceremonies, personal time commitments and non-team directed organizational work before calculating the capacity for this iteration.

D. Ask the ScrumMaster to speak to anyone on the team who did not finish his or her work during the previous iteration. This person is making the team look bad and should be disciplined if it happens again.

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Answer: C. Be sure you are acknowledging hours that team members will spend in …

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