YDS: Do Scrum Teams Track Individual Story Points?

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What Is Your Take on tracking individual story points? Let us know in the comments!

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.

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

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[dar]

You could also ask the manager, what his/her aim is. Maybe the manager is looking for something else, have a discussion about the WHAT than first.

[TheAgileLeanGardener]

Yep totally agree, I consistently see story points being misused. Escape Velocity is a great read. You had Daniel Vacanti on a while back and I prefer his approach focussing on cycle time and Monte Carlo Sim.

[matthewhodgson]

I remember reading that "personal velocity" was once a thing in XP (and therefore individual Story Points), but not any longer.

[scrummaster]

So the flip side -I am on a team where 1 dev gets a lot of things done -3 other devs have a history of not getting much or anything done. Always a new reason, always a new excuse. The one dev that gets everything done doesn't seem to have excuses -he just gets things done and does so quietly and helps others when they are stuck. The 3 other devs typically don't get anything done unless they are reminded - "Hey that ticket was supposed to get to done 2 sprints ago, what is going on?"

So while you raise some good points, I'm in the trenches here with those sorts of issues. I would wish the managers would see the individual devs velocity so that they can at least see the work not being doing.

[krod]

I think the problem is not Velocity or Story Points. I think the problem is management because they will always want something easy to measure. If it's not story points and velocity, they will find something else and that will be wrong as well. But they will want something.

[tomaszniemiec]

Couldn't agree more here. A massive red flag for the overall organization, that the understanding of Agile principles are broken and need to be established.
And to be fair....I've seen this happen with flow metrics. Individual Cycle times for tasks in Jira. Individual item aging counters. Focus on the behaviors not the tools.

[Jan.]

Great episode. Thanks for the book recommendation.