Splitting Backlog Items and velocity reporting

[Joe McAloon]

Hello All,

       I have been doing some research into the V1 splitting functionality and how it interacts with my team's velocity reporting. When we split backlog items at the end of our sprint, we have been allocating story points back on the original card if any value has been added to the entire story. I know that splitting is definitely not an Agile "best practice" but when it happens, does the allotment of some story points back to the original card reflect negatively in our velocity reports or does V1 capture it accurately?  We see the application zero out the effort done and story points after we execute the split. Any thoughts/guidance on this matter would be most appreciated.

Regards,

    Joe McAloon

[John.Ai...@mitchell1.com]

Joe,

We have to Split occasionally too.  VersionOne treats this as I have always understood (XP and Scrum methodologies) would.  The Story does not meet the definition of DONE so no velocity is achieved in the current Sprint…Just work done.

 

Over time this will even out since the velocity in the following Sprint should be higher.  I always ask the team to reflect at their retrospective on why they had Splits, especially if more than one Story is Split; and especially if the effort on some could have been applied to achieve DONE for one or more of them.  Usually they have fallen off best practices and lost sight of their Sprint Commitment (plan) – or gravitate back to the ‘not my job’ mentality rather than being the team we want them to be (see attached image) – since we were a ‘Development, IT/OPS and QA’ shop years ago before going to Agile development.

 

Regards, John

 

 

John Ainsworth Mitchell 1 Sr. Software Manager

 

Toll Free: (888) 724-6742 ext. 6025 | Phone: (858) 391-5000 ext. 6025

 

john.ai...@mitchell1.com | www.mitchell1.com

 

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[Dan Tanner]

If you feel you are able to attribute some value for "unfinished" User Stories, then it may be possible your User Stories are not broken down enough.  Perhaps instead of a User Story including tasks for A, B, and C, and then Splitting because C wasn't implemented fully, perhaps User Stories for A, B, and C should have been used instead.  This way, you have a better idea of what was accomplished and the velocity for that portion can be attributed to the past sprint instead of a pro-rated value of the whole.