Agile software development teams often use the notion of “velocity” to measure their ability at delivering value to the customer. In his blog post, Norberto Herz discusses the concept of “predictability” as a measure of the team’s health. His blog post starts with a series of interesting questions: can the company sell “predictability” to its customers? Is predictability a new application feature? Is predictability A team quality or a team goal?
From a product management perspective, Norberto Herz defines predictability as a way of achieving the team goals and adds that the team needs to feel its own bias for being a predictable one. it is the responsibility of the manager to encourage the team to be predictable and to supply the tools to achieve this goal. The blog post the describes the situation an actual team and presents its journey to being more predictable. A very interesting part of this story is the discussion about the root causes that prevented the team to achieve this goal, like the lack of metrics. The team refactored its process and achieved the following results after four sprints:
* The team was estimating quicker and more precisely.
* The product vision was shared by the entire team.
* Deviations in the roadmap were being foreseen and corrective actions were being taken.
Read the complete blog post on http://ourbit.norbertoherz.com//2016/11/01/about-predictability-and-team-goals/