Async velocity game

To play the game asynchronously all you need to do is create a form with a random list of 20 stories from your backlog. Represent each of these stories as a checkbox item underneath the following question.

“Select all the stories you think we can complete in a sprint of two weeks, with a team of 1 dev pair.”

You can create a spreadsheet with this same list of stories and any details you know about them at this point. Provide the link in the form itself. That way if the developer looking at the form needs to inspect the details they know where to look. Just make sure you don’t reveal the estimates.

Send the form to the developers who are on the team right now and have them fill out the form independently. You can include multiple pages on the form with different story sets, so you can simulate multiple runs of the velocity game.

Once the developers have responded to the survey, compute the sum of story sizes for each sprint they’ve filled and take an average. That average will represent the raw velocity for your project. A project manager can now use your raw scope, the raw velocity and the team’s prediction of scope change or scope addition, to build a contingency plan and a forecast.