What is Velocity?
Velocity is the average amount of Story Points (or items) a team completes per Sprint. It is a capacity metric — not a productivity metric — used mainly for forecasting: how long the team will take to deliver a given set of backlog items. Velocity is specific to each team and should never be compared between different teams.
In practice
A team observes its Velocity over several Sprints and uses the average (or a range) to project when a portion of the backlog will be done. Instead of "when will it be ready?", the conversation becomes "with the current Velocity and the estimated backlog, we have a window of X to Y Sprints". Velocity gains real power when combined with flow metrics: lead time, throughput, cycle time. The best teams use these metrics for product decisions — launch dates, prioritization, expectation management — not as a stick to push the team.
What happens when it is missing
Without any capacity metric, planning becomes guesswork. Dates are set by business wishes, not data. When Velocity is used as a target — "this team must do 30 points per Sprint" — the team starts inflating estimates, the metric gets contaminated and loses predictive value. In both extremes, predictability disappears and trust between team and business deteriorates.
Related terms
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