2 Big Reasons Why Sustainable Pace Is So Important to Agile Teams

When your teams get behind, does it seem like overtime is the only answer? It's not.

Mike Cohn, author of three best-selling agile and Scrum books, introduces two big benefits of working at a sustainable pace, and explains how overtime can occasionally have its place, even on an agile team.

00:00 Introduction
00:32 3 things to try when teams fall behind
00:49 Why managers turn to overtime so often
01:32 XP, Kent Beck, and overtime
02:02 Why some overtime can work
02:42 The reality of velocity & sustainable pace
04:21 The truth about defects & sustainable pace
04:35 Sprints are not races

We'd love to hear from you! How is your team doing at maintaining a sustainable pace? Is overtime a part of your day-to-day reality? How have you achieved a sustainable pace? Let us know in the comments.

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[vertigohashem]

As usual Mike, explaining big topics in simple language, my favorite coach always

[fruitloopygurl]

Ugh, I roll my eyes every time a leader asks for OT to meet an arbitrary deadline they set without consulting the team. :D I agree 100%, sometimes OT is needed and okay, but it is not something that should be sustained. Burnout is REAL

[maummagumma]

Overtime = stress= mistakes
I would add
=Poor quality of life
And in the long term
=Poor health
And more
=employee disengagement
And finalità
=company failure

[rudranshparab]

Thanks Mike this video comes at right time. We have old web service running in production. We wanted to develop similar and better new web service then current one. This request is not from end user or management . This is developers initiative. So no dead line as such. Since we have old service running in production for several years.

One of our scrum master said "I assure you project will deliver with high velocity. "

My question is having high velocity is so important ? (whether the project is having deadline or not )