In the Carry Over Trap podcast we address problems that arise around carrying story points from sprint to sprint. In real life we face similar challenges. The most relevant topic that comes to mind is running. For those of you out there that run or workout this will help you make the connection.

Every so often, I commit to a running plan or goal that I want to achieve. If you want to try and do a half marathon or tri-workouts, there are plans out there that you can follow. For the first couple weeks the plans are relatively easy tasks to complete. As the weeks progress and your own work and life schedules compete for your time, your running or workout schedule slips. I’m sure you thought this before like me: “I can catch up by working out longer or run a little further tomorrow”. Eventually a day turns into days, and you are left wondering what happened. Usually I will end up overdoing the running part to catch up and injure my foot or knee. After a couple weeks to months I will have to start all over again. This is very relatable to sprints. Eventually everything that was supposed to be completed in previous sprints will burn through and the team will be left with a clean slate. The good news is that starting over in running and sprints can let your learn from the previous mistakes and avoid the problems that arose in the past. Our lastest episode tackles whether carry over is in fact always bad or is it okay in some cases. You can find the episode listed above. Below you will find a great short video that will talk about your future self taking on commitments you won’t be able to accomplish.

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With Spring Training in full swing again, we thought we would touch on how pitch counts in baseball relate to capacity planning in Agile. We have this notion that most Major League Baseball starting pitchers are going to go out and pitch 7 inning every outing. Sounds like a great plan, right? With the rise of statistics and data in baseball, most pitchers are limted to 100 pitches to prevent injury. The result, most pitchers are pulled way before 7 innings. If you team has a power pitcher on the mound, you may see the star go 5 innings a outing. Often fans are rooting for pitches to stay out on the mound and continue to shut out the opponent. Pitchers who are asked to go out and pitch more than the standard 100 pitch count end up giving up more runs then expected or get injured. We will hear about new pitching stars appear without a pitch count, but in a few short years later their careers are shortened or their skillset diminish.

In Agile you can make the same mistake with your own teams. Its easy to burnout your team or not accomplish what your team had hoped for. In this latest episode about Capacity planning pitfalls we will address common mistakes made on teams. Hopefully you will be able to take away some new tools for your teams. Below we found a short video where Al Leiter talk about the importance of the pitch count and how this impacted his own career.