John Luif

Today was the first ip meeting I ran using a commitment based approach as opposed to a velocity based approach.  With a commitment based approach each story in priority order from the backlog is decided upon by the team whether or not to commit to completing the story for the iteration.  The team decides when they have enough work for the iteration.

With a velocity approach the Dev Lead/Scrum Master/XP coach whatever you want to call it looks at the teams velocity and goes into backlog and takes top stories in priority order to add up to the teams velocity.  This story set is what the team is expected to complete in the next iteration.

What I noticed with a commitment based approach is the team is much more involved in iteration planning and they actually committed to more work than I would of given them based on their velocity.  I’m not completely convinced the team can complete all of it but I have been proven wrong before.  I also feel that the team will get a better since of commitment since they are the ones making the decisions.

Basic rule of thumb when leading an Agile team, when a decision will affect the team ask the team.