BUSINESS PROBLEM:

How much work should a team commit to for a sprint? The team wants to make progress; however, they are not fond of working nights and weekends to hit a sprint deliverable due to over-committment. (a very common problem)

SOLUTION:

This is a difficult question for many teams. However, due to the iterative nature of Scrum, it is possible to determine the optimal target in points (LoE) for a given team for a given period of time. Coupled with better estimation practices and a "ruler," (see agile estimation presentation artifact), not only can sprints become the center for repeatable sustainable, quality development, but also the foundation upon which credible longer term (roadmap) projections can be made.

EFFECTIVENESS:

This spreadsheet tracks historical deliverables and completed work for previous sprints. By feeding the information about the current sprint into it (PTO, staffing, etc) very accurate projections can be made as to how much work a team can sustainably commit to in a period of time (iteration). I have found that deliverables that were sometimes off as much as 50% now frequently come in close to 90% of the time given improved story estimation and informed commitments using this spreadsheet.