How do you differentiate between velocity and throughput in Scrum?

The sprint velocity is based on the average of the last 3 sprints, and one sprint's velocity is not a good criterion for estimation and reliance. Also, factors such as the presence of new team members, leave and holidays, user story clarity, etc., influence the team's velocity.

I'd like to add that it's important to use velocity and throughput as tools for the team's benefit rather than as performance metrics to judge or reward individuals. Velocity can help teams with sprint planning and forecasting, while throughput provides insights into work completion. However, it's crucial to remember that these metrics are primarily for internal team use and should not be used for comparison between teams. They are also not measures of quality, so they should not incentivize rushing through tasks. Instead, these metrics can be a starting point for conversations on process improvement and delivery reliability, aligning with Scrum's values of openness and continuous improvement

Simplest way to think about velocity is as a planning tool. It represents a number of story points that you have “available” that you can schedule work against for the current sprint. It is based on your past performance, and is usually averaged to give you a generalized number. But just note that, velocity averaged can be “misleading” if you are looking at sprints with a lot of holidays or with more vacation days. For big teams, a scrum master will be able to help you break down the velocity to a number that is close to reality based on these factors.

Velocity measures the amount of work a team completes during a sprint, typically quantified in story points. It reflects the effort spent on delivering user stories or tasks and is an indicator of the team's capacity to handle work. Velocity helps predict future sprint outcomes by providing an average of how much work the team can complete, enabling better sprint planning and forecasting. Unlike throughput, which counts items, velocity focuses on the complexity and effort, making it a useful metric for managing workloads with varying levels of difficulty.

Throughput is a quantitative metric. Most times it works better than velocity. because it's a historical data and it's more comparable. Are we going to increase that? no again. we are going to stabilize it.

In Scrum and Kanban, throughput means getting work done and making sure it's good. It's like completing a task and giving it to the customer. Throughput focuses on delivering value and emphasizes finishing tasks thoroughly and at a high standard of quality. It's like a restaurant that not only prepares food quickly but ensures it's delicious and ready to serve to the customers. Throughput is about how much valuable work the team can complete and deliver to make customers happy.

Throughput measures the total number of work items (e.g., user stories, tasks) completed within a specific time frame, typically a sprint. Unlike velocity, which focuses on the total effort (story points) completed, throughput counts the actual number of items regardless of size or complexity. Throughput helps assess how many items the team can consistently finish, providing insight into the team's capacity and efficiency in handling discrete tasks. This metric is especially useful for tracking progress when work items are of varying sizes.

In my experience, it is important to remember that throughput is not a measure of quality, value or productivity. Instead, teams should focus on delivering high-quality, value-added work while using throughput data to fine-tune their process continually.

We should limit the number of metrics to review and stick to the least number. Throughput only makes sense if we normalize between tasks such that complexity and effort, on average, are kept the same across tasks. In practice, this is not possible. One task can be a complex feature, and another can be a small bug fix. Looking at just the count of finished tasks won't make sense. Even worse, it might promote anti-patterns like a team (or team member) taking up smaller tasks to boost their metrics. Throughput might make sense for an operations team where output is determined by how many incidents the team can tackle. Otherwise, I'd stick with velocity.

Velocity measures work completed within a sprint, aiding short-term planning. Throughput measures work delivered over time, helping long-term decision-making. It is important to measure both velocity and throughput for enabling organizations to optimize their performance and make informed decisions.

In general, the fundamental concept differs between velocity and throughput in Scrum. Velocity is a predictive metric and helps teams in sprint planning and to arrive at delivery dates approximations. Throughput is an actual performance indicator and helps teams in monitoring the team's real-time progress. It provides a realistic opportunity to enhance. Velocity is the team's capacity to perform a work in sprint vs throughput is the amount of work team has done in a sprint.

Velocity is an estimation but throughput is a historical data. they are different totally! Velocity is based on a complex concept; the story point. Throughput is based on a simple concept; the number of works.

Velocity is like a team's pace measured in story points, showing how much they can handle in a sprint. Throughput, on the other hand, counts the number of user stories or features completed over a specific time. Velocity is about capacity; throughput is about delivery speed.

Sprint Velocity and Throughput are the 2 widely adopted metrics to measure the health and progress of a scrum team. Velocity is predictive in nature and is usually used as the starting point for sprint planning. It's an indicative number, typically based on Story points, on the team's capability and delivery capacity. Through put on the other hand shows the actual units the system (team) outputs (Delivers) within a stipulated time (a sprint). Through put is based on units (stories) while Velocity is on the estimated size (story points)

Velocity measures the amount of work completed by a Scrum team in a sprint, typically expressed in story points. Throughput tracks the number of tasks or user stories completed in a sprint. Both metrics help in predicting future performance. Velocity focuses on the total effort, while throughput emphasizes quantity. Using these, teams can estimate how much work they can commit to in upcoming sprints, helping with sprint planning and forecasting. However, they should be used as guidance, not strict benchmarks, as both can fluctuate based on team capacity and complexity.

Scrum Masters play a vital role in coaching teams on how to effectively use velocity and throughput. They should emphasize that these metrics are tools for self-improvement, not targets to meet or exceed. Teams should inspect and adapt based on these metrics, focusing on their trends rather than absolute numbers. Scrum Masters can also facilitate conversations with stakeholders to ensure they view these metrics as indicators of progress rather than performance evaluations. It's essential to foster a culture where teams feel safe using these metrics for learning and continuous improvement

I believe that velocity and throughput are essential for determining project deadline estimates. Although this estimate is not always 100% correct, it gives us a perspective for planning. I also strongly endorse this statement: "Velocity and throughput are not indicators of quality, value, or productivity."

In Scrum, velocity helps teams understand how much work they can get done during each sprint. It’s calculated by adding up the points or estimates for tasks or user stories that were fully completed. This gives the team a way to plan future sprints more effectively by using their past performance to gauge how much work they can handle. It’s also useful for predicting how long it might take to finish the remaining work in a project. It also helps Scrum Masters give realistic updates to stakeholders about progress and deadlines. However, since every team’s situation and work are different, velocity should never be used to compare one team to another. Each team's velocity is unique to them.

Velocity is a customer driven metric and we only use it to predict future sprints. Throughput is actual data and we use it to measure our performance in the previous sprint.

I don't use velocity personally! because i don't use story points. i believe in normalize PBIs and then focusing in throughput and cycle time.

In Scrum, story points are the basic measures of a story. Velocity can help in identifying delivery dates and in sprint planning which is based on story points. Throughput basically measures the sprint's tasks and can help in areas to improve. Different teams will have separate velocity and it shouldn't be compared as every story evolves in it's own story points.

Although both of thease metrics create predictibility but non of them related to productivity... So if you ask me how can we check our team's performance with velocity I answer that you should measure customer leadtime and CFD instead of velocity to check performance

Using both velocity and throughput empowers our team to plan, execute, and improve Sprints more effectively, leading to greater success and efficiency. One main benefits of velocity is incresasing the confidence levels in our committed delivery. Think of it as your trusted guide. When our team consistently achieves a velocity of 50 Story Points per Sprint, it gives more confidence to commit to a workload of 45 Story Points in our upcoming Sprint. Regarding throughput, I would say time to market which delights our customers. When we achieve a high throughput, it's like seeing a smile of satisfaction on our customers' faces because we're delivering what they need promptly, making them happy.

Basically neither velocity or throughput are essential for Scrum. I would even say that those metrics are harmful for Junior Scrum Teams where Scrum values are not completely accepted, because team tries to focus on optimizing speed of task processing instead of delivering value.

I'd argue that no-one outside of the Scrum Team should be concerned with velocity directly, with the exception of how the team's understanding of their velocity helps planning and forecasting. As soon as stakeholders and management start fixating on velocity they're starting down the road of unintended consequences!

The key is transparency - teams openly tracking metrics as one input for self-organization, not as a sledgehammer for management. Metrics shine light on process obstacles, not people problems. Scrum masters must coach teams to apply velocity and throughput wisely as servant leaders, not commanders. Estimates and productivity data guide insightful conversations, not punishments. Metrics indicate where teams can gain skills and improve workflows. Wise Scrum masters help teams own their metrics as tools for learning and autonomy.

Velocity is past sprints' throughput average, hence the challenge is velocity can't be realistic (justify) to the current/now situation with your team. In contrast, throughput/result is the end-state left to retrospect the good and bad decisions during sprint execution. And the challenge is who will take ownership and fix the problem discussed in the retrospect meeting.

Velocity in Scrum can be tricky because it relies on estimating work in a way that isn't always precise, and it can be thrown off by changes in the project or unexpected issues. Teams might feel pressured to go too fast, which can lead to rushed work and team stress. Throughput has its own set of challenges, like the need to balance getting a lot done with making sure the work is well-done, dealing with tasks that get started but not finished, waiting on other teams, and managing resources. Both metrics have their ups and downs, so it's important to use them wisely and keep an eye on how the team is doing.

There is nothing wrong with unrealistic and inaccurate planning and forecasting, if you are taking those issues to retrospective. Your team should have ability to make mistakes. And if you are adding metrics that will deny your team of that ability - then you are destroying empirical process. Main challenges with velocity and throughput are that those metrics looks like silver bullet, but they aren't.

Velocity is used to assess the team's “Capacity” for completing work over multiple sprints. It can help the team to estimate how much work they can reasonably complete in the next sprint. Throughput, on the other hand, focuses on the number of user stories or features that the team successfully delivers in a given time frame (weekly, bi-weekly, monthly). this metric helps in evaluating the team's “Productivity” and delivery efficiency

An estimate is merely an estimate. Often times, people take them as actual efforts and penalize the scrum team. In such scenario, velocity helps us to look back what the team have had achieved in the past (normally up to 3 last sprints). But it doesn't guarantee that the future sprint is going to be of same kind. Because, the estimated efforts in the past can give only the future prediction. It has many factors such as complexity, skill, team availability, other tasks in hand, task dependency, requirement clarity, and so on. Similarly, throughput is a metric of team accomplishments. It shows the outcome of the sprint tasks and how much the team has completed and can likely be achieving. This is again indicative. Use it mindfully!

Velocity and throughput in Scrum serve different purposes. Velocity is like a magnifying glass for individual teams. It helps a team estimate how much work they can complete in one sprint. Think of it as a team's self-measuring tool for short-term planning. Throughput, however, is the big picture. It's about the actual delivery of work over time, often across multiple teams or the entire organization. Throughput measures the real value delivered to customers. It's less about what a single team can do in a sprint and more about what the organization accomplishes in the long run.

It's very important to reduce process complexity. In my experience, one effort metric (velocity for features and throughput for operations) and one output metric (project dependent) is a good start. Whenever you add a metric or something more to the process, is a good time to inspect and try to avoid process creep. Spend your time building not going through processes.

Where there are multiple teams, often there is a misconception to compare against each team's velocity. This is absolutely irrelevant. Every team has their own way of estimating stories. Because story points are not a way of measurement of time. This misbelief should be avoided.