VL-05
Under-Planning — Sprint Commitment Below Historical Minimum
Velocity
Default severity: medium
PrioritizationEstimationOutputEffort
What it detects
The current sprint\'s committed work falls below the team\'s historical minimum across N sprints in any dimension — the team committed less than their lowest ever completed sprint. This is extremely rare in healthy teams and usually signals a significant event: key person absence, team split, or intentional capacity reduction that was not communicated.
Detection formula
FOR each_dimension D: IF committed(D, current_sprint) \< baseline(D).min * config.vl.min_underplan_buffer // default: 0.95 THEN CRITICAL under_planning_below_minimum Report: committed vs minimum vs median, flag for investigation Check: was team_capacity updated? Was this sprint a hardening/IP sprint?Examples in practice
- A team shows the current sprint\'s committed work falls below the team\'s historical minimum across n sprints in any dimension while min underplan buffer is set to 0.95.
- Example signal: The current sprint\'s committed work falls below the team\'s historical minimum across N sprints in any dimension — the team committed less than their lowest ever completed sprint.
Suggested response
Plan to historical capacity—avoid repeated over or under-commitment and unstable velocity.
Coaching playbook
Symptom
The current sprint\'s committed work falls below the team\'s historical minimum across N sprints in any dimension — the team committed less than their lowest ever completed sprint. This is extremely rare in healthy teams and usually signals a significant event: key person absence, team split, or intentional capacity reduction that was not communicated.
Why it matters
When "Under-Planning — Sprint Commitment Below Historical Minimum" keeps appearing, the team is signalling a repeatable process gap. Left unexamined, the pattern hides where work really stalls and makes improvement metrics harder to trust.
What you can achieve
Plan to historical capacity—avoid repeated over or under-commitment and unstable velocity.
Facilitation questions
- What system change would stop "Under-Planning — Sprint Commitment Below Historical Minimum" from firing again?
- What do the cited issues have in common — same root cause or same workaround?
- Who owns the two-week experiment and how will we verify on the next import?
Run this rule against your own tracker data with Flow Analyzer.