Can I calculate standard deviation for a series of velocity results?

Alex Eldridge_034hbu

Hello -

I am looking for a way to show the consistency of team velocity over time.  I am thinking one way to do this would be to graph a series of velocity results from sprints, along with the standard deviation, similar to the control chart view.   A low deviation would indicate consistency and predictability for velocity.

Does anyone know of a tool or available report to achieve this goal?  I could manually pull results and graph them but was hoping for a quicker off the shelf solution.

Bill Sheboy

Hi @Alex Eldridge 

How often do you need to do this?

If you need this often, I recommend looking at the Atlassian Marketplace for dashboard gadgets/reporting which do this better than Atlassian's interpretation of a control chart.  Although some of these addons are not very open about their interpretation of data and their math/statistics usage, and so experimentation may be required to use them effectively.

If you do not need this often, and want to fully understand the data, reporting, and outliers, you could do as you said and export the data into a reusable spreadsheet for this reporting.

One more idea: rather than analyzing sprint velocity, instead consider using throughput (count of things), cycle times (e.g., build cycle time), and age of WIP for your analysis.  Velocity is often based on story points, which can serve a purpose to check shared understand, yet that basis makes it less valuable for the level of analysis you seem to be describing.

Kind regards,
Bill