Plan from What You Learned
We learn how much a team can do by looking at the last iteration - that’s “yesterday’s weather.” If the team finished 18 points in the last iteration, we plan for 18 points in the next iteration.
And at the midpoint we check the team’s progress, expecting to learn that half of the work, 9 points, has been done. But, if we find that more got done, 12 points (wonderful!), then the stakeholders might decide to move more work into the current sprint since there might be capacity for it.
Since the sprint still already has 6 points remaining to be done, the stakeholders move six additional points into the sprint. So that adds upto 24 points for the current sprint. And maybe the team completes all 24 by the end of the sprint, or maybe they only 22, or less. And that’s just fine too!
The useful lesson: use actual results to guide planning. Because the team completed 22, use 22 as the starting point for the next iteration.
Yesterday’s weather (the last finished amount) is the best predictor of what you should plan for today.