An agile team working on a financial services application has maintained a consistent velocity of 28-32 story points over the past six sprints. During Sprint 7 planning, the team estimates several user stories and realizes they are consistently giving higher estimates than in previous sprints for similar work. When asked, team members mention they are concerned about upcoming regulatory requirements that might require rework, though the specific requirements won't be finalized until next quarter. The Product Owner is concerned that velocity is decreasing. What should the team do to address this situation?

Question

Accepted Answer

The correct answer is B. Option B is correct because it separates two different concerns: estimating current work and investigating uncertainty (ECO Process Task 3.4 - Plan and manage scope). Story points should reflect the effort to complete work as currently understood, not include buffers for potential future changes. Using historical benchmarks keeps estimates consistent and meaningful. Creating spike stories specifically to investigate regulatory requirements treats uncertainty appropriately—as separate work to reduce risk and gain knowledge. This maintains velocity as a reliable metric. Option A is a common distractor because teams often inflate estimates when uncertain, but this makes velocity unreliable and hides the real issue (lack of information about regulations). Story points measure current complexity, not future risk. Options C and D are problematic because C compounds the estimation inflation problem across all work, and D overreacts by stopping all progress when the regulatory impact might be minimal or far future.

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