Velocity Crisis: Intra-Iteration Work Distribution

Recently, we have had a crisis of velocity at work. Our velocity has more than halved in the last six iterations. This post is not about that crisis; it is about one aspect of the introspection the crisis has called for.

Of late, we found that we have been pushing massive amounts of tickets because we overestimated what we could get done. Ee suspected, however, that it was more than just optimism and a constantly decreasing velocity. We suspected that part of the problem was not recognizing early that we were overcommitted. We found ourselves too often in situations where work needed to be pushed to the next iteration, but that our options were limited because we were at the end of our iteration.

We began looking at the points completed per day of our iteration to get a handle on the lack of visibility into iteration progress. We found that a graph of our points completed per day looked like a ramp. This, of course, explained why we were pushing tickets so late in the iteration; most of the work was being completed at the end of the iteration. It was normal to be only 20% complete when we were more than halfway through an iteration, so there was no reason to worry. I do not know what the ideal curve would look like, but probably something like a bell. Certainly something more constant than a ramp.

Beyond making a concious effort to complete tickets earlier in the iteration or raise warnings to our colleagues if we are not, we have actually reorganized our iteration. We have increased the time for testing, which gives us an extra day of buffer room at the end of each iteration. We have moved stakeholder meetings to the end of the iteration. This way, the seniors are not completing tickets, but planning for the next iteration towards the end of the current iteration. Not only does this mean we cannot complete tickets at the end of the iteration, but it also means that as soon as the build is approved, developers (and critically, senior developers) can focus and start work on the next iteration.

This seems to be working. Our velocity has begun to increase again (thanks to the new hire, and more senior involvement in direct coding), and the curve is flattening out. It is now much easier to predict whether we will complete what we say we will, usually by the end of the first week of our two week iterations.