Tuleap offers a powerful open source Scrum and Kanban agile tools. Since Tuleap 9.19, you can enjoy a velocity chart in addition to the Burnup and the Burndown. What is velocity? How to read the chart like a pro? How to configure it into Tuleap?
What is a Velocity chart?
Velocity chart measures the pace at which a team get work done. It shows the sum of points of the work delivered across all iterations. Development teams usually track their velocity to help them determine how much work they can perform sprint-over-sprint.
Horizontally are the milestones: below, the sprints of the release.
Vertically overviews how much points have been delivered for each sprint.
Understand the Scrum velocity chart
Velocity chart provides a measure of effort, story points, or any size that get completed sprint-over-sprint. Only items that are totally completed at the end of the iteration are counted.
One the release is done, Velocity chart provides the team an overview of the amount of value delivered in each sprint. It is useful to predict the amount of work the team can get done in future sprints. During planning meetings, it helps decide how much work developers can really commit to.
Burnup, burndown, velocity : the differences
To be short:
- the burndown shows the remaining effort
- the burnup displays the completed work towards the goal
- velocity show the amount of work done by milestones
How velocity calculation is done in Tuleap
Team velocity should be analyzed at each new sprint planning. Looking back the needed points for the previous work, development team can estimate the new sprint more accurately. In another words, she knows herself better.
In Tuleap, velocity calculation depends on your Scrum planning configuration.
Let’s say your “Release” planning configuration allows to add “User stories” and “Bugs” as above.
Velocity will be calculated only with the trackers allowed in the backlog. It is the sum of the initial effort (estimated points) of finished items. Velocity is calculated when all items of the sprint backlog get a status “done”.
Example:
One Sprint is made of 3 User Stories (US):
- US1 : initial effort 5; status Done
- US2 : initial effort 3; status Done
- US3 : initial effort 5; status On Going
When the Sprint ends, its status switches from “on going” to “closed”. Sprint velocity is calculated on the done stories; so US 1 + US 2 = 5 + 3 = 8
Velocity for this Sprint equals 8, not 5 + 3 + 5 because the US 3 is not finished yet.
If you forgot to close US3. The Sprint Velocity is wrong. If this happen, you have two ways to rectify calculation:
- you re-open the Sprint. Close the User Story. And close again your sprint. A new computation is done. Vecolity is now to 5 + 3 + 5 =13 points
- you can update manually “velocity field” to 13.
How to create a velocity chart in Tuleap?
Use the Tuleap Scrum template
The Scrum template provided into Tuleap Agile Dashboard has been updated so that you do not need to configure by hand all the following.
If you create a new Scrum workspace, use the new Scrum template to get easily Velocity.
If you have an existing Agile Dashboard, you should follow the above guidelines to create a Velocity chart.
Adapt your Scrum workspace already up
Set velocity semantic
In the Sprint tracker/administration/semantic, choose on which field velocity will be calculated. No new field is needed. Tuleap will store the information and display it automatically in the “overview tab” of the Release, in the Scrum dashboard
Tracker semantic on “initial effort” and “done” must be specified to get the velocity calculation done.
- semantic on “initial effort” is needed to enable the sum on fields
- semantic on “done” is required as only the “done” items will be taken into account in the calculation
If a tracker configuration is missing, alerts messages inform you about what is wrong.
If you do not need some trackers to be integrated into the velocity chart, you do not need to specify it. For example, if you have “stories” and “bugs” into your sprint, you should want to calculate velocity only on completed stories, not bugs.
How to get velocity chart module in Tuleap
This plugin is available under Tuleap Enterprise Edition or myTuleap subscriptions. Velocity chart is related to the Agiledashboard plugin. You have to get this plugin installed and activated on your Tuleap platform to use this new chart.
Buy now in myTuleap