Velocity vs. Benchmarking in Jira: what's the difference?

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“What’s the difference between The Cross-Team Velocity Chart and Benchmarking Chart for Cross-Teams?“ - This question the Broken Build team gets quite often, and we thought we should finally give a detailed explanation once and for all.

No chart, regardless of its rich functionality, will ever give a complete picture of cross-team performance. A scrum master might find the most comprehensive velocity chart, but for the C-level, it will be completely useless, giving way too many unnecessary details.

This is why we believe that having both velocity and benchmarking charts is vital for Agile project management and should ideally be used together, giving different perspectives of teams' productivity.

Click the infographic to open in high resolution.

Velocity Chart: Deep insights into the team’s performance

This chart is perfect for Scrum Masters who want to not only keep track of team progress but also get a deeper understanding of the processes behind it.

• Sprint Metrics: The velocity chart presents aggregated data from the sprint metrics perspective. You can assess your teams' performance with 10 advanced metrics, including Initial and Final Commitment, Rollover, Added and Removed Work, Total Scope Change, etc.

• Sprint Breakdown: Here’s where you can really dive into details, slicing and dicing sprint data as you need: by board, issue type, priority, assignee, and more. With a 3-level breakdown (sprint metric + breakdown #1 + breakdown #2) and issue list, we’re not joking when we say you can seriously get to the bottom of your sprints.

• Target lines and benchmarks: You can set flat and moving target lines to set healthy benchmarks for each sprint metric, helping teams quickly assess performance as good, poor, or needing improvement.

Benchmarking Chart: Bird-eye view on cross-team progress

For top management, the Benchmarking Chart showcases data where each team is presented as a separate bar, which makes it easy to compare and benchmark.

• Cross-Team Perspective: Compares multiple teams at once, segmented by sprint or month.

• Benchmarks: Additionally to the target lines, it tracks the Average, 75th percentile, Median, and 25th percentile and allows users to choose any of these benchmarks to monitor deviations from.

• Metrics: Sprint metrics are also added to the picture but as secondary parameters.

• Breakdowns: The benchmarking chart offers the same 3-level breakdown + issue list as the velocity chart, giving users a necessary level of detail.

Putting It All Together

So, it’s up to you and your needs which chart you will need today - but you don’t have to choose because both of these charts are included in the Agile Velocity Chart Gadget (along with the Individual Velocity Chart Gadget) and are waiting for you to give them a try with a 30-day free trial.