Purpose
The deferred work item metric is used for measuring the capability of the team by observing the number of work items
that are deferred to the next iteration. A deferred work item is a work item that has been assign to an iteration but
cannot be completed as planned. Initially, the deferred numbers may vary because the team does not know their own
capability to complete the work item. After a few iterations, it should be close to zero throughout the lifecycle
(similar to Iteration Velocity metric)
Definition
Count: Total number of planned work items in iteration
Count: Total number of deferred work items in iteration.
Analysis
A good way to monitor deferred work items over time is to plot a trend chart. The team should pay attention if the
trend remains stable or high overtime. This indicates that there are more tasks than the capacity of the team to
complete them. You may need to re-evaluate the iteration velocity and adjust it accordingly.
When a high number of work items are deferred to a future iteration, the team must perform further
analysis to discover what went wrong in the last iteration.
Collection and reporting tools
IBM® Rational® Team Concert® collects data for this metric.
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