Release Burndown - Velocity

Question

Hello everyone,

I'm trying to understand the velocity figure quoted on the release burndown report. I have a project which has four sprints completed. 10, 10, 10 and 21 are the story points completed in each sprint.

Using the last three sprints I calculate the velocity should be 13.66 (10+10+21)/3

When I view the release burndown I'm told: "Based on your velocity for the last 3 sprints, it will take 5 more sprints to complete this version.
16    Velocity per sprint"

16 seems higher than I would expect, but I'm not sure why.

I can see here: https://confluence.atlassian.com/jirasoftwarecloud/release-burndown-777002702.html that 'velocity' is different to velocity on the velocity chart, but it doesn't say how/why (unless I've missed that).

If someone could clarify that would be great.

Thanks.

Robert Rogers_nhgtr1 · Answer

Thank you for the reply. The current sprint does seem to be counted, however, this has just three points completed. So, taking 3+21+16 actually gets to the 13.3 points.

I was looking into this further, I think it's to do with estimation perhaps... If I look at the light green bars for the last three completed sprints I see the numbers 10, 16 and 21 (negative), which does produce a rounded velocity of 16 points.

If I look to the velocity chart for the same three sprints I see 10, 10 and 21, this could be coincidence, however, if I look at a sprint report for each one I can see 21 points for last closed sprint, 16 --> 10 for one before that (one story from an 8 to a 4, one from a 2 to a 0) and the one before that 12 --> 10

This would explain why the velocity chart shows 10, 10 and 21, and it would have explained that the release burndown was taking the first estimate, however, it has 10, 16 and 21 - not 12, 16, 21.

The release burndown really does not seem right though - if you downgrade a story from 8 to 4 and you complete it then surely this should be counted as 4 points being achieved? not 8? - So the 'points completed' on the release burndown of 16 doesn't make sense to me.

Andy Heinzer · Answer

Usually this report is only counting the last three closed sprints.  However the documentation https://confluence.atlassian.com/jirasoftwarecloud/release-burndown-777002702.html does explain there is a scenario where that report can count an existing open sprint:

Is my current sprint counted when calculating my team's velocity?

The current sprint is usually not counted when calculating the team's velocity. In the example above, the current sprint bar shows grey sections (like the bars for the predicted sprints) to represent this. The exception is when you have already completed more work in the current sprint than the work that was predicted to be completed. In this case, the current sprint (and the actual work completed) is used as one of the three sprints used to calculate the velocity.

So in your case, if you have an existing open sprint that has completed say 16 story points, but estimated less than that many, this sprint would actually be included as the latest of 3 sprints.   Which I think would be (10 + 21 + 16)/3  which would actually be 15.667, but this report is always rounding to the nearest number.   So if your current sprint has completed anywhere between 16-18 story points (and it was estimated to complete less than that number), you would still have an velocity on this report of 16.

I hope this helps.