Stabilization Sprints and Velocity

Here is a question that just showed up in my in-box regarding how to calculate a scrum team’s velocity when they are doing stabilization sprints. This notion of stabilization sprints has become more popular lately, as they are included in SAFe (Scaled Agile Framework).

Question

We do a 2-week stabilization sprint every 4th sprint where we complete regression testing, etc. but don’t take any new stories. Is there a rule of thumb around including a stabilization sprint in the team’s velocity?

Answer

The purpose of tracking a scrum team’s velocity is to give stakeholders (and the team) predictability into the rate at which they will complete the planned deliverables (the stories). Velocity is the rate of delivery. The stabilization work doesn’t represent specific deliverables that the stakeholders have asked for; it is simply a cost that you are paying every 4th sprint, because you aren’t really done with the stories during the non-stabilization sprints.

You can reduce this cost by having a more robust definition of done. Look at each thing that gets done during stabilization and ask “How could we do that during each sprint, for each story, so that done really means done?” As you move more work out of stabilization and into your definition of done, your predictability gets better because there are fewer surprises to be discovered during stabilization. The amount of stabilization time that you need goes down, and you can measure the cost savings in terms of reduced time and effort (which is money). By the way, you can learn more about definition of done this Wednesday at the Scrum Professionals MeetUp.

Therefore, my recommendation is to not assign points to the stabilization work.

Here are a couple of other posts related to velocity:

Cheers,

Chris

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