Agile Delivery Under a Fixed Deadline
A team of six developers is building an internal expense-approval system. The contract fixes the delivery date at 20 weeks and the price. The product owner has a prioritized backlog of 120 story points. After four two-week sprints, the team has completed 32 points. Velocity is stable at about 8 points per sprint. The customer requests two new features estimated at 15 points and insists they are mandatory. The team lead proposes adding two contractors and working overtime.
1. Project the completion using the measured velocity and determine whether the full backlog can be delivered on time.
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Sprints remaining after sprint 4: 20 weeks = 10 sprints total, so 6 sprints remain.
- Remaining backlog = 120 − 32 = 88 points, plus 15 new = 103 points.
- Capacity at 8 points/sprint × 6 = 48 points.
- Shortfall = 103 − 48 = 55 points, more than half the work.
Conclusion: the full backlog plus the new features cannot be delivered by week 20 at current velocity. This is arithmetic, not opinion. The decision must be about scope, date, or both - not about hoping velocity rises.
2. Assess the team lead's proposal to add contractors and overtime.
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Both levers are weak here.
- Adding contractors: new people need onboarding and context. In a 6-person team, adding 2 people mid-project typically lowers short-term velocity (Brooks's law). The 6 remaining sprints are too short to recover the ramp-up cost, and onboarding consumes existing developers' time.
- Overtime: sustained overtime degrades quality and throughput; defect rates rise and the team burns out. It may buy a sprint or two of apparent speed at the cost of later sprints.
Neither closes a 55-point gap. The honest recommendation is to negotiate scope: deliver the 88-point core, defer or phase the 15-point additions, or move the date. Present the velocity data to the customer as the basis for the conversation.
3. The customer says the two new features are legally required. What is the most defensible plan?
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If the features are mandatory, they outrank lower-priority backlog items. Re-prioritize:
- Insert the 15 points of mandatory features into the next sprint.
- Remove an equivalent-or-greater set of lower-value stories from the remaining scope so total remaining work fits 48 points.
- Re-baseline the release around the reduced scope and document what is deferred.
This keeps the fixed date and price while honoring the legal requirement, at the cost of deferring nice-to-have features. If the customer refuses to drop any scope, the only remaining options are extending the date or increasing price - and that trade-off should be stated explicitly rather than absorbed silently by the team.