Everything You Need to Know about Agile Velocity

Key Takeaways

• Agile velocity measures the amount of completed work a team delivers during a set period of time, usually a sprint or iteration.
• Velocity should only include completed work. Work that was started but not finished should not be counted because velocity is meant to show what the team can actually deliver within a cycle.
• Agile marketing teams can use velocity to plan more realistically, forecast future work, and understand whether process improvements are making a meaningful difference.
• Velocity is usually calculated by adding up the estimates for all completed work in a sprint. For example, if a team completes work estimated at 3, 5, and 8 points, its velocity for that sprint is 16 points.
• Velocity is not the same as capacity, throughput, or productivity. Capacity measures availability, throughput measures the number of completed work items, and productivity should be connected to value and outcomes.
• Velocity should be treated as a planning and learning tool, not a scoreboard. It is most useful when one stable team tracks its own delivery patterns over time.
• Agile marketing teams can improve velocity measurement by estimating more consistently, automating tracking where possible, and using retrospectives to connect delivery patterns with process improvements.
• Common velocity mistakes include focusing on individual performance, comparing teams, using inconsistent user stories, counting unfinished work, and chasing higher velocity at the expense of value.

Outside of software development, velocity doesn’t get nearly as much attention in the Agile world as it should. It can easily feel like an unnecessary addition to your process metrics. After all, you and your team know how much work you’re getting done, right?

Honestly, you probably don’t.

Our vague impression of how much our teams are accomplishing just isn’t good enough to fuel real Agile progress. Improving how your team plans, forecasts, and delivers work requires accurate and consistent long-term measurement of velocity. Without it, you’re left without a reliable way to know whether your team is becoming more predictable or whether any process improvements you’re making are having a significant effect.

For Agile marketing teams, velocity can be especially useful because marketing work is often full of shifting priorities, stakeholder requests, review cycles, and changing campaign needs. When used well, velocity gives teams a clearer sense of how much work they can realistically complete, not as a performance score, but as a planning and learning tool.

Fortunately, getting Agile velocity right starts here.

What Is Agile Velocity?

Put simply, Agile velocity is the amount of completed work your team delivers in a set period of time, usually a sprint or iteration.

That word “completed” matters. Velocity should not include work that was started but left unfinished, because the purpose of the metric is to understand what the team can actually deliver within a given cycle.

In many Agile teams, velocity is calculated by adding up the estimates for all completed work during that period. For example, if a team completes user stories estimated at 3, 5, and 8 points during a sprint, its velocity for that sprint is 16 points.

For Agile marketing teams, that completed work might include campaign assets, emails, landing page updates, content pieces, research tasks, marketing operations requests, or other work items the team has estimated and finished during the sprint.

But beyond that simple definition, things get more complex quickly. How do you measure units of work so they’re consistent and comparable? What time period do you use? Let’s break each of these down to understand the approaches to Agile velocity you may want to consider.

Choosing a “Unit of Work”

The first challenge you have is creating a consistent way to measure and compare units of work. Otherwise, there’s no way to accurately track your velocity over time. So what options do you have?

The most common approach is to base your velocity on user stories. These are simple sentences designed to quickly explain who the work is for, what it will help that audience do, and what value they will ultimately get from it. To take the example of the user story behind this article:

As a manager of an Agile team, I want to learn how to better use Agile velocity to ensure my team operates at its best.

Other approaches include using hours of time engineers spend on work (great for engineering teams, but fairly limited for anyone else), and story points. But for the vast majority of business agility use cases, we recommend user stories because they help teams not just track what needs to happen, but focus that work on providing value for stakeholders.

Getting Estimation Right

Of course, two user stories can represent dramatically different amounts of actual work, so the second critical part of the equation is estimation. This is when your Agile team comes together to estimate how much work all its user stories will take. You can measure work in hours, days, or anything really as long as it’s a consistent measurement you can apply to all of your work.

Many teams use games or tools to help ensure their planning is accurate and improves over time. For example, planning poker is a favorite way to gamify planning for better Agile velocity estimation and tracking over time.

Bringing It All Together

So once you’ve chosen a unit and a way to estimate the amount of work it will take, you can begin to track how many of those units you think you can accomplish in a set amount of time. When you’re using Scrum or Scrumban, that time period is easy because you can just use your sprint.

Congratulations, you have a way to track your team’s real output over time! Now it’s time to put that knowledge to use.

Why Is Velocity Important in Agile?

Continuous improvement is at the heart of Agile. But accomplishing it requires the ability to measure improvement to determine whether or not a change you made is really making a difference. 

Always ensure you begin with a good experimental design. This involves ensuring other variables are consistent (if you change 4 different things about a sprint and get great results, it’s almost impossible to know which of them really made the difference), knowing exactly what hypothesis you’re testing, and ensuring your results are actually statistically significant.

Only by tracking your team’s Agile velocity properly can you set up good experiments and learn what makes your team more effective.

Velocity vs. Capacity vs. Productivity vs. Throughput

Velocity is useful, but it is often confused with other measures of team performance and workload. For Agile marketing teams, those distinctions matter.

Capacity measures how much availability the team has during that same period. A sprint with vacations, holidays, meetings, launches, or heavy stakeholder involvement may have lower capacity, even if the team’s long-term velocity has not changed.

Throughput measures how many work items the team completes. For example, a marketing team may finish 12 work items in a sprint, but those items may not all be the same size or complexity.

Productivity is broader and harder to measure. A team may complete more work, but that does not automatically mean it created more value. For marketers, productivity should be connected to useful outcomes, not just more completed tasks.

This is why velocity should be treated as a planning and learning tool, not a scoreboard. It helps teams understand their delivery patterns, forecast more realistically, and notice when something in the process may need attention.

How to Improve Measuring Velocity

Even if you’re already measuring your velocity, chances are you can improve how you do it. Here are a few techniques you can employ for better Agile velocity measurement.

Find Better Ways to Estimate

The aforementioned planning poker is one of our favorite ways to improve estimation. But whatever strategy you use here, be sure you track how accurate your team’s estimates are. So, for example, if your team estimates a task will take 4 days to complete and it takes 8, it’s vital you try and understand what went wrong with that estimation so you can do better next time. 

Use a Tool to Automate Velocity Tracking

Relying on teams to manually track velocity is inviting problems. Inevitably, someone will forget to track something or type in a value incorrectly, messing up the data you rely on to improve. That’s why automated velocity tracking tools are so useful.

In addition to simply automating a lot of manual work, they usually offer more advanced analytics and analysis tools, empowering you to uncover more insights. So begin by checking whether any of the tools you currently use offer this feature and, if not, you can find lots of good options online.

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Hold Retros and Connect them to Velocity

As mentioned, one of the most important steps in using Agile velocity is tracking and addressing what goes right and what goes wrong. Retrospectives are the best time to do this. Take them as an opportunity to talk through your estimation and velocity to see what successes are worth celebrating and doubling down on as well as failures that should be addressed.

Common Challenges

Besides everything we’ve mentioned so far, there are a few other issues you should keep an eye out for.

First is focusing on individual instead of team performance. If you have single team members who are excited about their velocity, you’re actually hurting your team’s performance. Optimizing the output of each individual and optimizing the output of the entire team are two different things. You want to avoid a situation where each individual on the team is trying to optimize their performance instead of thinking about how to work together so the team achieves its goals.

Another issue to watch out for is comparing teams, particularly teams with different functions. The point of Agile is not to get a bunch of teams to work and see who’s best. The point is to maximize the quantity of value delivered to stakeholders. If your Agile teams are using velocity tracking to see who’s best, they’re missing the point and getting away from Agile.

Finally, you should be on the lookout for inconsistent user stories. Because they form the bedrock of most velocity tracking, it’s extremely important they are done consistently. Be sure you follow the basic formula of “as a… I want to… so I can…” Otherwise, you’re stuck doing something akin to building a house out of bricks that are all different sizes, and you don’t need that kind of a mess.

Agile Velocity FAQ

What is velocity in Agile?

Agile velocity is the amount of completed work a team delivers during a set period of time, usually a sprint or iteration. It helps teams understand how much work they typically finish so they can plan and forecast more realistically.

How is Agile velocity calculated?

Agile velocity is usually calculated by adding up the estimates for all completed work during a sprint. For example, if a team completes work estimated at 3, 5, and 8 points, its velocity for that sprint is 16 points.

What is velocity in Agile marketing?

In Agile marketing, velocity measures how much estimated marketing work a team completes during a sprint or other fixed period. That work might include campaign assets, emails, landing page updates, content pieces, research tasks, marketing operations requests, or other work items.

Why is velocity important in Agile?

Velocity is important because it helps teams plan more realistically, forecast future work, and understand whether process improvements are making a difference. It gives teams a clearer view of their delivery patterns over time.

Is Agile velocity the same as productivity?

No. Velocity measures completed estimated work during a set period of time. Productivity is broader and should be connected to value, outcomes, and impact. A team can increase velocity without necessarily creating more meaningful business or customer value.

What is the difference between velocity and capacity?

Velocity measures how much work the team completes. Capacity measures how much availability the team has during a sprint or iteration. A team may have lower capacity because of vacations, holidays, meetings, launches, or stakeholder involvement, even if its long-term velocity has not changed.

What is the difference between velocity and throughput?

Velocity measures completed work based on estimates, such as story points. Throughput measures the number of work items completed. A team might complete many small tasks and have high throughput, but that does not always mean it delivered more estimated work or more value.

Can you compare velocity across Agile teams?

No. Velocity should not be used to compare teams because each team estimates work differently and handles different types of work. Velocity is most useful when one stable team tracks its own delivery patterns over time.

How can Agile marketing teams improve velocity?

Agile marketing teams can improve velocity by estimating more consistently, limiting work in progress, reducing review and approval bottlenecks, using retrospectives to inspect their process, and making work visible through tools like Kanban boards or Agile project management platforms.

What are common mistakes when using Agile velocity?

Common mistakes include treating velocity as an individual performance metric, comparing velocity across teams, changing estimation methods too often, counting unfinished work, and focusing on higher velocity instead of better value delivery.

Improving How You Use Agile Begins with Training

One key theme throughout our discussion of Agile velocity is that it has to come from a strong foundation of Agile fundamentals. Otherwise, it’s easy to forget why you’re tracking velocity at all. Soon you’re falling prey to the common challenges we just mentioned and even drifting towards “fake Agile.”

Luckily for you, it’s now easier than ever to avoid all of that by taking a Business Agility Fundamentals course. By starting with a basis in Agile principles, you’ll be better equipped to nail Agile velocity and set your teams up for success. In particular, it will enable you to better understand how you can fit Agile into the way your organization works, and apply it to key areas like recruitment, sales, and reporting.

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