Scrum: utilization vs. velocity

At work we're recently started using Scrum for running some projects. As expected we need to slowly learn the lessons. One of the things we're been having a lot of discussion on recently is the meaning of the focus factor. Let me begin by explaining what a focus factor is, at least in my company.

To determine how much work you can do in a sprint, you need to estimate the top stories. We estimate these stories in "ideal man days" using planning poker. This means that each developer answers the question: if we lock you into a room each day without any distractions, after how many days would you have this story finished?

After these estimates we determine people's availability for the project. After all, they might also be assigned to other projects, if only for part of their time. Even people that have no other projects, tend to have other activities. Like answering questions from customer support or consultants, department meetings, company wide meetings, job interviews with candidates or just playing a game of fusball, table tennis or bowling on the Wii. So basically nobody is available to a project 100% of the time. At most it's 80% - 90% and on overage it seems to be about 60% - 70%.

So the first stab at determining how much work someone can complete is:

• available hours = contract hours * availability
  

But when you're working on the project, you're not going to always be contributing towards the goals that you've picked up. Within Scrum there is the daily Scrum meeting. It lasts no more than 15 minutes, but those are minutes that nobody in the team is working towards the goal. And after the meeting a few team members always stick around to discuss some problem further. Such time is very well spent, but it probably wasn't included in the original estimate. So it doesn't bring the "remaining hours" down very much. I see all this meeting, discussion, coaching and tutoring as necessary work. But work that doesn't bring the team much closer to the goal of the sprint. I used to call this overhead, but that sounded like we were generating waste. So in lieu of the agile world I switched to using the term focus factor. So now we have:

• velocity = contract hours * availability * focus factor

So the speed at which we get things done (velocity) is the time we're working minus the time we loose to non-project work minus the time we loose on work that doesn't immediately get us closer to the goal. In the past I probably would have included a few more factors in there, but in an agile world this is already accurate enough to get a decent indication of how long it will take us to get something done.

If there's one thing I've learned from the agile movement and Scrum it's to focus on "when will it be done" instead of "how much time will it take". So to focus on velocity instead of utilization.

Utilization is the territory of classic project management. It's trying to make sure that every hour of every employee is fully accounted for. So if they're programming, they should have a time-writing slot for programming; if they're meeting, there's a slot for meeting; if they're reviewing designs, there's a slot for that and if they're drinking coffee or playing the Wii... you get the picture. Of course there's no project manager that wants all that level of detail. But in general they are focused on what you're spending your time on.

Agile thinkers see this really differently. They say: it doesn't really matter how much time you spend, what matters is when it is done. This sounds contradictory so let's see if a small example can make it clearer what I'm trying to say.

If I tell my boss that some feature he wants will be done at the end of next week, he is interested in only one thing: that it is done next week. If we get it done on time, he doesn't care whether I spent two hours per day on it or whether it was twelve hours per day. I care about it of course, because I don't want to work late every night. And there's also a limit to the amount of gaming I like to do during a day, so two hours per day will leave me bored quickly. But to my boss, all that matters is when I deliver, not how much effort it took.

This is why the focus for Scrum projects is on velocity and not on utilization. So in Scrum you want to know how many hours you still need to spend on a job, not how many you've already spent on it. A classic project manager might be really proud that you worked late all week and clocked in 50+ hours. An agile project manager will note that you reduced the "hours remaining" by 10 hours and nothing more. If you're looking for compliments on all your hard work, then Scrum might not be for you.

Learn more:

• Scrum: story points, ideal man days, real man week


• a simple tool to generate burndown charts online


• Who estimates the stories in Scrum?