From 39% to 86%+ in One Sprint
A Large Financial Services SaaS Provider · 6-Person Dev Team
The Situation
A 6-person development team at a large financial services SaaS provider was struggling. Sprint completion rates averaged 39.25% across 25 sprints, and the trend was getting worse — declining to the 17-23% range by year end.
The team had the talent. The problem was the system they were working in:
- • No clear sprint planning process or capacity awareness
- • Stories were too large and poorly defined
- • No visibility into team velocity or delivery trends
- • Significant tech debt creating unpredictable work
What Changed
New development practices were implemented. The changes were focused on the systems, not the people:
- ✓ Capacity-based planning — sprints scoped to actual team availability, accounting for PTO, meetings, and support load
- ✓ Proper story scoping — teaching the team what a right-sized story looks like: clear acceptance criteria, vertical slices through the stack, completable within a sprint
- ✓ Velocity tracking — 3-sprint rolling averages to inform planning and spot trends
- ✓ Injection tracking — measuring unplanned work to improve forecasting
The Results
The impact was immediate. In the very first sprint under the new practices, completion jumped to 85%+ and has frequently exceeded 100% of commitment since.
Sprint Completion Rate Over Time
Trimester Goal Met for the First Time in Two Years
The sprint-level improvements compounded into something bigger. Under the new practices, the team met their trimester delivery goal for the first time in two years. Predictable sprints make predictable delivery possible.
Key Takeaway
The team didn't change. The people didn't change. The system changed. By giving developers properly scoped work and planning based on actual capacity, the same team went from consistently missing targets to consistently hitting them.