The Scrum Field Guide: Practical Advice for Your First Year

Chapter 4. Determining Team Velocity

Software teams are a bit like cars in that you can measure their economy in terms of efficiency. Cars measure efficiency in terms of fuel economy, how far a car can travel per unit of gasoline. Teams, on the other hand, measure their efficiency in terms of how much work they can complete over a certain period of time. This measure is commonly known as velocity and is typically expressed in terms of story points. Simply put, velocity is the average number of story points a team completes per sprint, as defined by the team’s done criteria. (Read more about done criteria in Chapter 7, “How Do We Know When We Are Done?”)

I say that teams are a bit like cars because they are mostly unlike cars. Teams do not come ...