Scrum Master Interview Question 172

Your Scrum Team is consistently failing to meet forecasts and Sprint Goals, and their velocity is volatile. What are the probable reasons for this problem, and how would you address it with the team?

If a Scrum Team is exhibiting a volatile velocity, consistently failing to meet their forecasts, it suggests that velocity is being used as the prevalent metric for measuring that team’s progress.

You should mention this, and talk about the notoriety of ‘velocity’ as the industry’s most prevalent metric for measuring a team’s progress. They should further be able to explain why velocity is altogether a doubtful agile metric, and point out that quantitative metrics are not ideally suited to measuring a team’s progress in mastering Scrum.

There are many factors that make a Scrum Team’s velocity volatile:

• New team members being onboarded;
• Experienced members leaving the team;
• The team working in uncharted territory;
• The team working with legacy code, probably undocumented;
• The team running into unexpected technical debt;
• Holidays and sick leave reducing the team’s capacity;
• An executive intervention changing a Sprint’s scope; and
• The team addressing unplanned priority bugs.

Another common cause for a Scrum Team to consistently fail in meeting their forecasts is that the team’s Product Backlog items are being poorly prepared, thus making the work items difficult for the team to estimate. Conversely, the projects being given the team might suffer from poorly documented legacy code, excessive technical debt, or just too much buggy and poorly written code — all of which make estimation a gamble.