Documentation for GreenHopper 6.2.x. Documentation for earlier versions of GreenHopper is [available too].

Viewing the Velocity Chart

Created by Rosie Jameson [Atlassian], last updated on May 12, 2013 2 minute read

This page only applies to Scrum boards.

The Velocity Chart shows the amount of value delivered in each sprint, enabling you to predict the amount of work the team can get done in future sprints. It is useful during your sprint planning meetings, to help you decide how much work you can feasibly commit to.

You can estimate your team's velocity based on the total Estimate (for all completed stories) for each recent sprint. This isn't an exact science — looking at several sprints will help you to get a feel for the trend. For each sprint, the Velocity Chart shows the sum of the Estimates for complete and incomplete stories. Estimates can be based on story points, business value, hours, issue count, or any numeric field of your choice (see Configuring Estimation and Tracking). Please note that the values for each issue are recorded at the time the sprint is started. Changing the Estimate value afterwards will not be reflected in the Velocity Chart.

To view the Velocity Chart,

Click the Agile link's down-arrow in the top navigation bar, then select your preferred board from the resulting dropdown menu.
Click Report, then select Velocity Chart from the drop-down at left.
The Velocity Chart will be displayed, showing your last seven completed sprints.

Note that the Velocity Chart is board-specific, that is, it will only include issues which match your board's Saved Filter.

Related pages:

Configuring Estimation and Tracking

Screenshot: Velocity Chart (click to enlarge)

The velocity can be estimated as the average, over several recent sprints, of the sum of the estimates for the amount of work completed by a team per sprint — so in the chart above, the velocity = (37 + 47 + 50 +57) / 4 = 48. A team's recent velocity can be useful in helping to predict how much work can be completed by the team in a future sprint.

28 Comments

Peter Callies
Jun 21, 2012
When will a gadget be available that allows the velocity report to be displayed on a dashboard?
1. Unknown User (boardtc)
  Jul 23, 2012
  +1 for velocity gadget
  1. Anonymous
    Nov 28, 2012
    +1 for Scrum Rapid Board chart widgets in the dashboard
kp
Aug 30, 2012
Hi, How to view the velocity chart in a classic board? I could see that, it could be done easily with 'report' drop down in GH 6. But am trying to figure out how to see for my existing sprints - in earlier versions of Green Hopper.(v 5.10)
Anonymous
Nov 07, 2012
My velocity reports the completed, but committed is zero for some Sprints. What causes a user story to be committed?
1. Alf Hauke
  Nov 20, 2012
  same here - what has to be done to also see the committed story points in the velocity chart?
  1. Rosie Jameson [Atlassian]
    Nov 20, 2012
    You need to ensure that the values are set before the sprint is started
    1. Anonymous
      Jan 10, 2013
      
      Is it possible to regenerate this chart? The story points field was not available to us when we started the sprint. We have now populated it but the chart seems to be a shapshot view and doesn't update.
Aaron Dsouza
Nov 27, 2012
Is there a way to export this velocity chart image into a PDF or some image format?
1. Rosie Jameson [Atlassian]
  Nov 28, 2012
  You may like to watch/vote/comment on GHS-6135 - Getting issue details... STATUS
Anonymous
Dec 14, 2012
It would be great to get the average velocity of the last x sprints displayed on the chart ... so you do not have to start any calculator
1. Rosie Jameson [Atlassian]
  Dec 16, 2012
  Hi, you may like to log a feature request at https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/GHS
M Burdge
Jan 14, 2013
I get the error "No issues present in sprint to generate scope change model" when viewing the Velocity Chart,
and no sprint drop-down to choose a different sprint.
1. Fabian Meier
  Jan 17, 2013
  Rename the active sprint. Most likely there is another board with the same sprint name. Seems to be a bug in GH.
Piotr Polak
Jan 24, 2013
M Burdge - make sure, that you have no parentless sub-tasks in the board. In my case it was caused by bug mentioned in GHS-6471. Including parent issues of all subtasks solved the problem.
1. M Burdge
  Jan 24, 2013
  Thanks. In this case, it was caused by a filter which was excluding all closed issues.
Anonymous
Feb 20, 2013
Why can I only see 7 Sprints at a time? Can I configure the chart to show all the sprints for the release?
Joshua Deixler
Feb 23, 2013
I have multiple teams working from the same project on different boards. My velocity is only showing the last couple of sprints across different teams. Can I edit this report so I can show different views.
Nagendra BR
Apr 19, 2013
Is there a way add this to JIRA Dashboard? If so can you let me how to do the same.
Rosie Jameson [Atlassian]
Apr 28, 2013
Not at present, sorry. You may like to adda comment to this issue: GHS-5345 - Getting issue details... STATUS
John Henry Rosocha
May 07, 2013
My Velocity chart is only showing me my last 7 sprints? Is this configurable? I would like to see the chart against the entire closed sprint history.
1. Rosie Jameson [Atlassian]
  May 12, 2013
  You may like to watch/vote/comment on https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/GHS-6242
Joshua Deixler
May 10, 2013
It would be helpful to configure this by Team (Board) and by the historical sprint count and a date range. As a Scrum master, I want to see the performance of my team based on our boards activity so that I can have multiple teams in the same project and focus on each individual team performance
1. Rosie Jameson [Atlassian]
  May 12, 2013
  You may like to log a request for this at https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/GHS
Dave Sokolowski
May 21, 2013
This is only available when tracking work via story points, not with hours, correct?
Zane Berzina
May 28, 2013
@jdeixler and Rosie I saw you comment recently in May 10th and Rosie's answer where she states you can log a request in GHS project. I am also interested in functionality where we can see the time estimted per issues accumulated to an assignee in a sprint. Mainly to see that they don't have to overwork and schedule/split their time normally per week.
Have you found any solution or workaround for this - maybe with the filters or JQL? If there is an issue logged, I would be glad to watch it, if you could tell me the GHS number.
Thanks.
Nicklas Kittelmann
May 29, 2013
There seems to be a bug when you have work done in sub-tasks. Many of my issues are estimated to 0 hours, and they include sub-tasks which together span several weeks worth of work. This makes the velocity report show that we have a velocity of close to zero - which makes it rather useless.
1. Paul Alexander
  May 29, 2013
  The velocity chart relies on 'pointed' items. Everything else is noise spent to get there. We are in the same boat...we have production support that are zero point items while we have stories with some pointed value. The goal is always to get the team to find a way to be more efficient, delivering more 'new' business value each sprint by way of delivered stories. So, yes, a result from a sprint may very well be that only 8 points of work was delivered of the say 16 points the team took on. But, the outcome may point to an increased load of production support issues that sprint which caused less new work to be delivered.
  In your case, Nicklas, if you do not point any, or very few, of your issues, you won't get anything from this chart. What you may be seeking is the burndown chart to calculate how far you are from done based on time remaining...