Measuring velocity

Hi,

I’ve been reading the Playbook book, it just mindblowing all the good advices thoughtbot is giving away; thank you for that. I’m trying to start on the right track with some client projects. I notice that in the new version of the book you switch from Trajectory to Trello for managing user stories and my question is related to how are you guys measuring velocity now with Trello?

Thanks in advance,

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The short answer is that we don’t measure velocity anymore when using Trello.

We found that while Velocity is a very useful tool, it also has its downsides. On projects with irregular staffing, or at the beginning or end of projects its not as accurate as you’d like. It also sometimes becomes a number that clients focus on, which is not the point.

So instead we do our best to have open, honest communication, weekly planning meetings where we plan the week (at which everyone is present) and discuss what got done and what didn’t and why, and what we realistically expect to happen the coming week.

This isn’t perfect, it works well when things are going well, but can have trouble when things aren’t going so well. It also means that you can’t have automated enforcement of what is and isn’t expected to get done. But Velocity wasn’t perfect either, so for many projects we’ve chosen the overall tool over the specific feature of Velocity and it’s gone well.

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I see. Seems like the only way is to just drop the velocity points as you say. But the only thing that worries me still is the fact that I won’t predict a little bit ahead how many cards a team will be able to finish after two or three iterations. But then again the team can always keep adding new cards to the in progress column after even when the iteration is not over yet. So probably that’s the best way.

Thanks,