Velocity of a Programmer

Why is it difficult for programmers to go easy and make use of phrases that are unambiguous for the outside world? I might not be able to answer it now, but I hope it is evident to you from the title of the blog which made me put this question. Velocity of a Programmer in simplest form is the pace at which a programmer is able to function. It is a measure to estimate the productivity of a programmer and in turn estimate the amount of work that can be taken up for the iteration. But, technically speaking, productivity, software development and progress of a programmer are not quantifiable. So, how the heck does this phrase bear importance?

The crux of this phrase lies in the fact that progress can be evaluated relatively. The productivity of a programmer today when compared with the productivity in past gives the velocity or progress of a programmer. Progress in the last iteration is referred to as Yesterday’s Weather, another weird jargon by the programming community. “Yesterday’s weather” is a good comparison with the previous sprint. Good for when you’re starting to build regular iterations with a team (“we did this last time, let’s aim for the same plus 10%”) If the last iteration was affected by vacation, sick leave etc then velocity not so good. Yesterday’s weather helps estimate the amount of work that can be taken up in the present iteration. The name comes from the fact that the best predictor of today’s weather is yesterday’s weather.

There’s another way to measure the velocity using Average Velocity. Average velocity is good to provide an indicator built from the last x iterations. Good for when the team are showing they can consistently deliver but not so good when they’re just starting out.