Agile for Humans with Ryan Ripley and Todd Miller

YDS: Do Scrum Teams Track Individual Story Points?

6 snips

Mar 10, 2023

Tracking individual story points in Scrum teams can lead to unhealthy competition and disrupt teamwork dynamics according to Todd and Ryan. They believe it is a reckless metric that can impact behavior negatively and pit teammates against each other. The podcast discusses how this practice hides things and provokes behaviors that go against collaboration.

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ADVICE

Don't Track Individual Story Points

Avoid tracking individual story-point totals for developers because it damages teamwork and skews behavior.
Do measure team outcomes and collaboration instead of individual velocity to preserve cooperative incentives.

ADVICE

Resist Per-Person Point-Based Reviews

Avoid using story points as a basis for individual performance reviews because the metric is arbitrary and reckless.
Do resist management pressure to implement per-person point tracking and defend team-focused measures.

INSIGHT

Individual Velocity Hides True Work

Measuring individual velocity gives a false and incomplete picture of contribution and hides important context.
It incentivizes avoiding help, bugs, and production work because those lower visible numbers.

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Todd and Ryan think that tracking individual story points in Dev supervision is a major problem and a red flag. They believe it is a reckless metric that can impact people's behavior and pit teammates against each other. Ryan cites a book, "Escape Velocity" by Doc Norton, which argues that measuring individual velocity fails to give a complete picture and likely gives the wrong impression. It also hides things and can provoke behaviors that are against teamwork. Todd thinks tracking individual story points could lead to fights and is a massive issue that should be avoided.

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🔥 This Professional Scrum online training course introduces you to the principle of facilitation and gives you a fast path to Scrum Event facilitation and certification. This is the best first step you can take down your path to facilitation mastery! Professional Scrum Trainers Todd Miller and Ryan Ripley built this course to help those interested in Facilitation get up and running quickly using the principles, techniques, and practices of successful facilitation.

👉 Professional Scrum Master I (PSM I) assessment: https://www.scrum.org/professional-scrum-master-i-certification

Professional Scrum Trainers Todd Miller and Ryan Ripley built this course to help those interested in Scrum get up and running quickly using the Framework. They've partnered with Daria Bagina from ScrumMastered to bring practical materials and guides to the course.

Todd and Ryan also co-authored a book - Fixing Your Scrum: Practical Solutions to Common Scrum Problems.

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