Archive for June, 2009
On mistaking speed for getting what you need
It’s a known fact that even though Scrum is a simple methodology, its simple concepts are frequently misunderstood. So, let’s mix the aforementioned quest for a software productivity measurement with those misconceptions around Scrum, and what do you get? Answer: the use of Velocity as a productivity measurement.
Using a single number (like Velocity) as a measurement of a team is plain wrong for several reasons:
1 - It’s very easily cheatable - inflate your estimates in story points, add water and… voilà: higher Velocity.
2 - For starters, Velocity doesn’t ever tries to measure productivity. Velocity is an agile planning tool! It tells us, as a team, how many story points we can “burndown”, on average during a sprint. Therefore, it helps the team to get an idea of what they can commit (roughly) on a Sprint Planning. So, let’s use Velocity for it was intended: to help us plan.
In my opinion, this focus on measuring productivity is misplaced. Let’s use that energy in measuring return of investment, on post-controlling the projects we delivered - in short, in analysing the true results of our finished product… instead of obsessing over an abstract number.
If you parachuting from a plane, you can cut the strings to the parachute in order to go faster - but will you get the desired results in the end?
