Its been sometime since I blogged.  Work has been super hectic. And the summer vacations are on. So there is a lot of movement from family and friends. Between spending time at the office and ferrying folks from and to the railway station and bus stands, one does not find time to really blog.

But something occurred yesterday. I sent out an email to the entire program on where each team stands by way of points planned, velocity and thereby hangover for one particular iteration.

Now, bear in mind that this is something we share with our clients on a weekly basis and the taxonomies are understood and adhered to by everyone at the client place. So by extension the program management team also understands this parlance.

We wanted to make this information available to everyone within the program and hence sent out an email with the data. A slew of emails followed on what actually is velocity. Terming the points closed in iteration as velocity by traditional definitions is obviously wrong. Because, we could be clearing hangover from earlier iteration and so it does not reflect the actual velocity. But if we look at that score over time, we will get an average velocity for a team.  

For over two years, we played with these terms and it was all fine. The moment this got shared with the larger audience, a number of interpretations came out. Some of the worries to my mind are,

·      Comparison of velocities between teams

·      Worry if the wrong velocity will be used to sign-up for future iterations

·      Just the term of velocity being used in the wrong context

It raises some interesting questions. The purpose of sharing this data was for participation and transparency.  So everyone understands how we get measured, the KPIs the client utilizes and thereby align all of us to the metrics at hand. But, the kind of questions posed makes on think.

·      Should we now share two different reports; or at the very least modify terminologies to suit the palates of two different audiences?

·      Should we try to explain and achieve common ground across different groups?

·      Or should we just stop sharing this report within the entire program?

I think the following weeks will give us some idea on which way to move. Certainly we seem to have added more work for ourselves by sending out this report to the larger program. I personally like to follow a policy of 95:95:95. That is 95% of the information to 95% of the people, 95% of the times. And certainly this report can and needs to be shared with everyone.

But for me it’s a huge experiential learning.  When something is shared to the larger public for one purpose it can get completely interpreted in a different manner.

I have seen something similar even within our apartment association. When we send messages or decide to work on certain common items, the communication made to the residents takes on so many different hues. Some get communal even, and we would not have thought of that angle at all. I am beginning to appreciate a bit on the significance of communication agencies and public relations firms.