Velocity

Velocity is a measurement of how much work our project is getting done each iteration.

Stories are estimated as small/medium/large and points are assigned based on that:

small = 1 medium = 2 large = 4 too big = 8 (these need breaking down into smaller ones)

At the end of an iteration, the points for all completed stories are added up. The result is the velocity. This feeds into planning for the next iteration, as an estimate of how much work is likely to be completed.

Note: Pivotal Tracker calculates our velocity for us automatically by averaging the number of points for the last three iterations, and populates forthcoming iterations based on that. In Pivotal Tracker, bugs and chores do not count for points, only stories do.