I observed that the velocity in a support and maintenance project
doesn’t go up as it happens in the development projects. Instead, after
identifying its normalized capacity it generally stays on there.
However, it is true that the number of stories supported or value
delivered increases over a period of time as team gathers more knowledge
on technical/functional areas.
This is because,
·As the team gets more expertise on support incidents, they start
to size the effort with less story points. For example a support
activity that was sized to be 10 story points will be sized to be 5
after 3 months and 3 after 5 months. I can see this happening.
·The knowledge earned enables the team to repeat the support activity quickly and deliver more.
·However, as they understand the issue earlier, they tend to size the repeating activity with less story points.
Whereas, development projects don’t
repeat the activity. Event the reusable components are planned with less
story points. So the velocity in development projects generally goes up
as the team gets more expertise.
