Anyone who has ever run a marathon knows why Sustainable Pace is a critical success factor: once you've gone too fast, it takes a disproportionate amount of time to recover from exhaustion. Sustainable Pace also plays an important role in agile teams.
Let's go!
What is Sustainable Pace?
Sustainable Pace is the speed that can theoretically be maintained for an infinite period of time. For agile teams, this pace refers specifically to the output that a team can deliver within a sprint cycle – without building up technical debt or burning out team members.
At its core, Sustainable Pace is about being able to start each day refreshed and be able to perform at your best.
Why is Sustainable Pace important in agile teams?
Sustainable Pace is important for agile teams because only sustainable pace can ensure team well-being and productivity in the long run.
Overworking teams over a longer period of time has serious consequences:
- Regular overtime, increased stress levels and deteriorated team morale
- Deteriorated communication and less mutual support
- Little time for familiarization with new, or innovative topics
- "Best practices" are neglected
- Less impetus for change from the team
- Build up technical debt
- More careless mistakes and a higher error rate
So maintaining sustainable velocity should be on the mind of every stakeholder on a team.
Why is keeping Sustainable Pace difficult in practice?
In practice, it is very easy to get into an unhealthy work mode and "overpace." The triggers for this are common:
- Unrealistic expectations (from stakeholders of the teams)
- Overambitious sprint goals of the team
- "Scope creeping", i.e. subsequent extensions of the scope of work during the sprint so that more work is required than originally planned for
- Deadlines at short notice that require overtime
The problem: Once a team is "Overpaced" the above mentioned negative consequences come into play and one focuses on solving the sympthoms and overlooks the underlying core cause: Unsustainable Pace.
It can be very difficult for agile teams to get out of an unsustainable routine – especially when natural operational blindness makes it difficult to identify Unsustainable Pace as the core causes.
But there are ways back, of course:
Tips to achieve and maintain Sustainable Pace in agile teams
Tip 1 for Sustainable Pace: Achievable sprint goals
Teams should not make a habit of setting overambitious sprint goals. In OKRs, there are so-called "stretch goals" where you try to achieve at least 80% (Stretch Goals in OKR). Such stretch goals should be avoided when defining sprint goals. It should be possible to reach the sprint goal at 100%.
Teams often lack the strength to say "no" when management or stakeholders make too high demands on the content of the next Sprint. As a Scrum Master or Agile Coach, you can support the team in demanding their rights from stakeholders.
In addition, it is important to reflect at the end of the sprint whether the sprint goal could be achieved without overtime. If overtime was necessary, the sprint goal should be considered as not achieved. Based on this, the team can continuously learn how much work can actually be done in regular working hours.
Tip 2 for Sustainable Pace: Management Awareness
Managers are often familiar with so-called "stretch goals" from the OKR context, where they try to achieve at least 80%. However, such stretch goals should not be used when defining sprint goals. It should always be possible to achieve the sprint goal at 100%.
Agile coaches and scrum masters should communicate to management the importance of Sustainable Pace for the long-term success of the organization. Usually, managers agree that short-term successes are not worth jeopardizing the mid- and long-term productivity of the teams.
Tip 3 for Sustainable Pace: Cooldown periods
Especially when you are coming out of a stressful time, you need a recovery period to get new momentum.
It is no coincidence that the ShapeUp framework, for example, schedules regular cool-down periods. During these periods, teams can work on topics of their own choosing. The time can be used to fix bugs, develop new ideas or try out new technical possibilities (see ShapeUp)
Tip 4 for Sustainable Pace: Sprint Retrospectives
You have the feeling that "Sustainable Pace" could be a problem? Reflect on it with your team. With these questions you can start a discussion about it in retrospective:
- As a check-in, "On a scale of 0 to 10, where would you rank us as a team from 0 = Underpaced, 5 = Sustainable Pace to 10 = Overpaced?"
- What symptoms of overwork (high stress) can we observe in our team?
- What have we been short on as a team recently?
- What would you do if you could completely decide what you worked on for a week?
Tip 5 for Sustainable Pace: Team Health Checks
For a continuous monitoring, you can also make a regular team health query. For example, the following health check items are suitable for this purpose:
- We don't need overtime to reach our sprint goals.
- We are careful enough not to promise too much, but at the same time ambitious.
- We have the courage to say "no" when we have to.
- I can shake off stress at work and get my head free for new tasks.
- I am free to schedule my work as it suits me.
- In my work, there is enough time available to pursue innovative ideas.
Tip 6 for Sustainable Pace: Exchange with Peers (Our Meetup)
To reflect, nothing helps more than an exchange with peers from other teams and preferably even other companies.
That's why we're hosting our Echometer Meetup on June 15, 2023 on "Nailing Sustainable Pace in Agile Teams."
In doing so, we create an open platform to start an open exchange of experiences with peers. Be part of it!
Learn more and register for the Meetup
Bonus: Nerd Knowledge about Sustainable Pace
A bit of history: Sustainable Pace is nothing new
Already early in the history of agile working methods, Sustainable Pace was considered. Yes, even long before the first Scrum Guide was published in 2010 (The history of the Scrum Guide).
The origin of Sustainable Pace lies in XP (eXtremeProgramming) by Kent Beck from 1996. It also appears in the agile manifesto:
"Agile processes promote sustainable development. The sponsors, developers, and users should be able to maintain a constant pace indefinitely."
8th principle in the agile manifesto
Sustainable Pace was probably initially named after Ron Jeffries (also one of the signatories of the agile manifesto).
