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Velocity value in backlog

Chris Berry_u3bhu7

Hi everyone,

I noticed that when planning a sprint from the backlog, there doesn't seem to be a way to enter or view the team's velocity. The backlog only shows planned story points, and once the sprint starts it changes to statuses like Not Started, In Progress, and Completed.

Because of this, we're constantly having to manually calculate and check how many points have been planned against our target velocity during sprint planning.

I did find something similar in Plans, but that feels like a much heavier solution for what seems like a simple backlog-planning need.

A couple of questions:

Is this functionality available somewhere and I'm just overlooking it?
If not, what's the best way to submit a feature request to Atlassian? The real question is: how are we supposed to track velocity over time.

Thanks!

Accepted answers

Trudy P Claspill

Hello @Chris Berry

The total points allocated to items in the sprint should show at the top of the sprint on the right in the backlog screen. It should appear as three colored bubbles.

To see past velocity you need to go to the Reports tab and view the Velocity report. There is no functionality to display past velocity directly on the Backlog screen

To submit a feature request your admins can open a support case directly with Atlassian. They can ask to be given a link to the feature request. For an end user you can use the Feedback option under the Help option in Jira. That process doesn't open a case through which you can have an ongoing dialog though.

All comments

Trudy P Claspill

Hello @Chris Berry

The total points allocated to items in the sprint should show at the top of the sprint on the right in the backlog screen. It should appear as three colored bubbles.

To see past velocity you need to go to the Reports tab and view the Velocity report. There is no functionality to display past velocity directly on the Backlog screen

Trudy P Claspill

You can also check their public ziira instance to see if such a change request already exists.

https://jira.atlassian.com/secure/Dashboard.jspa

Rahul_RVS

Hi @Chris Berry

If you are looking to get a past sprint velocity report and are willing to try out a mktplace app, take a look at

Agile Velocity & Sprint Status Gadgets

The app comes with dashboard gadgets to track team member's / team's velocity / productivity based on story points / time spent / issue count in a sprint and also track sprint status with multiple parameters.

Thought the app does not show velocity on backlog screen but you can easily customize the sprints which you want to see right on your dashboards.

Disclaimer : I am part of the team which developed this app

Resource Velocity Chart- SP.PNG

Team Velocity.PNG

Alexey Pavlenko _App Developer_

Hi @Chris Berry,

The Velocity Report is not available for non-finished sprint, unfortunately. If you need this functionality, you can try the app I developed - Multi-team Scrum Metrics & Retrospectives.

With it, you can:

Track:
- Data across any sprints, months, quarters, half-years or years.
- Several teams (including those ones sharing the same project) at once.
- Velocity, capacity, allocation, completed story points (completed scope), planned (initial, final scopes), added and removed scopes, as well as other metrics. You can even create your own custom metrics using JQL.
- Trends and average metrics across periods.
Conduct Quantifiable retrospectives.
And many more.

3 boards/teams in the same view, 1 period selected for analysis:

3 boards/teams in the same view, all periods are clicked for average metrics and dynamics:

Best regards,
Alexey

Khrystyna_Dzhus_SaaSJet_

Hi @Chris Berry,

As mentioned, there's no velocity figure on the Backlog screen itself; historical velocity is in the Velocity Report under the Reports tab. That part won't change without a feature request to Atlassian.

The thing you're actually after — tracking velocity over time — is where the native Velocity Report falls a bit short. It shows committed vs completed per sprint, but there's no rolling average you can use as a planning baseline, so you're left eyeballing the bars.

If you're open to a Marketplace app, the Sprint Performance Report in Time in Status by SaaSJet covers that specific gap. Its Team Velocity section plots Committed vs Completed across the last 7 completed sprints and adds an Average Velocity value on top — so you get a trend baseline instead of reading each sprint in isolation. It follows your board's estimation method (Story Points, Work Item Count, or Original Time), so it matches how you already plan.

One honest caveat: like the native tools, it won't show velocity on the Backlog screen during planning — it's a read-only analysis of completed sprints. So it solves the "track over time / set a realistic target" half, not the "see it inline while dragging items into the sprint" half.

Disclaimer: I'm part of the SaaSJet team behind Time in Status.

If you have any questions, I'm happy to help!

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