How the Say-Do Ratio Helps Measure Commitment in Agile Teams

Agile teams live on a steady diet of promises and proof. At sprint planning the promise is made, and at sprint review the proof arrives. The Say-Do Ratio in Agile sits right between those two moments by asking a simple question with big consequences: did we deliver what we said we would deliver? It sounds basic, and in a way it is, and yet it also touches planning discipline, estimation skill, flow, quality, and team accountability all at once.

Let’s put it this way, if you want a metric that sparks productive conversations and gets everyone to be a little more honest about capacity, this one delivers. If you want a vanity number, or something to brandish in a slide deck without changing how you work, this one will bite back. Used well, the Say-Do Ratio will become for you a trustworthy indicator of scrum effectiveness and agile performance. Used poorly, however, it will only become background noise, or worse, a reason for sandbagging.

TL;DR

The Say-Do Ratio measures how reliably Agile teams deliver on their sprint commitments. It’s calculated as (Completed Work ÷ Committed Work) × 100, revealing whether a team’s planning and execution are in sync.

A stable Say-Do Ratio (typically 80 – 110%) builds trust, improves forecasting, and highlights healthy planning habits. Used wisely, it drives honest conversations about capacity, flow, and accountability, helping teams deliver predictably and sustainably.

What is the Say-Do Ratio in Agile?

The Say-Do Ratio in Agile is a reliability metric that compares what a team commits to at sprint planning, the say, with what they actually complete by the end of the sprint, the do.

Put more formally:

Say-Do Ratio = (Completed Work / Committed Work) × 100

You can express both numerator and denominator in story points, count of stories, or flow items such as product backlog items.

Story points are most common because they normalize for size, and yet the key is consistency. Pick one unit and stick with it across sprints so your trend line means something.

A few anchor examples make the concept tangible:

• The team commits to 40 points and completes 36 points, so the Say-Do Ratio is 90%. That is a credible and healthy sprint for most teams
• The team commits to 40 and completes 20, so the ratio is 50%. That calls for a root cause conversation about things like estimation, flow, or interruptions
• The team commits to 20, completes 40, the ratio is 200% . People cheer, and then you ask why the team did not forecast closer to their real capacity.

It is not a productivity scoreboard,it is a predictable agile metrics that should reward sustainable delivery, not busywork.

Why the Say-Do Ratio Matters for Agile Teams

Most teams do not need another number. They just need fewer surprises.

1. Predictability and Trust

A stable and high Say-Do Ratio (which is usually in the 80% to 110% band over time), says your forecasts and your outcomes are spot on. Product owners learn they can plan releases with confidence. Stakeholders develop real trust, which is the kind you earn by delivering the right slice of value when you said you would.

Repeated misses, on the other hand, drain that trust. When a team’s ratio floats at 50% to 60% for several sprints, you have a credibility issue on your hands.

“Trust is built on telling the truth , not telling people what they want to hear.”

Simon Sinek

 

2. Capacity Signals for Planning

The metric quickly reveals planning habits. A ratio that is consistently low means you are overcommitting. A ratio that is consistently very high, say 120% and up, often means you are undercommitting or gaming scope.

Both patterns hide real capacity. A healthy pattern is a ratio that hovers near 100% with occasional variation, because work and humans both have uncertainty.

3. Risk and Stakeholder Management

Executives like straight answers to two questions, when will it be done, and how confident are you. If your Say-Do Ratio is stable, you can forecast with ranges, for example, based on the last eight sprints we hit between 85% and 105% of commitments, so for the next quarter we will promise at the 85% line and treat anything beyond that as stretch. That kind of a conversation manages risk explicitly and responsibly.

4. Healthy Tension, Stretch without Sandbag

Agile teams need ambition. A good Say-Do Ratio nudges teams to make stretch commitments that still fit within realistic capacity. Teams that consistently hit exactly 100% may be optimizing for looks rather than learning. Teams that live in the 60s, however, may be swinging for the fences every sprint and striking out.

How to Measure Say-Do Ratio in Sprints

The arithmetic is easy, the governance is where teams earn their stripes. The rules for what counts must be crystal clear, or you will argue the number every review:

Step 1: Define the Say

The say is the total committed work at the end of sprint planning. Freeze the list at that moment, and then you can treat any story added later as unplanned.

You can include a small planned buffer, for example 10% to 15%, for production support or tiny opportunistic tasks. Just call that out during planning so nobody is surprised when those items appear mid sprint

Step 2: Define the Do

The do is work that meets your Definition of Done and is accepted by the Product Owner before the sprint ends. Not halfway done, not code complete without tests, and not merged but missing release notes. If the Definition of Done has gaps, your Say-Do Ratio will be an illusion. Tighten this first, then measure.

Step 3: Decide on Units and Policy

Pick one unit (usually story points). Then decide what happens with split stories. Common policy: if a story is not finished, it gets zero for the ratio and then it can be re-estimated and pulled into a future sprint. Some teams give partial credit for a split story, and yet that tends to inflate numbers and reduce urgency to slice work into truly shippable increments.

Step 4: Handle Scope Changes

Scope changes are where the metric gets stressed. Treat changes transparently:

• Work added mid sprint counts toward completed work in the numerator, but not toward the original commitment in the denominator. This keeps the focus on forecasting quality.
• Work removed mid sprint naturally reduces the denominator only if the team did not start it and the Product Owner explicitly descoped it. Silent descopes destroy trust and make the metric meaningless too.

Step 5: Run the Math and Track Trends

You can calculate at the end of each sprint. Then you can view the ratio as a rolling trend over the last six to ten sprints. Spiky metrics are normal in young teams, while smoother lines indicate planning maturity in short.

Data Hygiene Checklist

Ask these questions each sprint:

• Did every completed item meet the team’s Definition of Done?
• Did we freeze the commitment at the end of planning and log mid sprint ads separately?
• Did we clearly mark split stories and carryovers?
• Did we protect the story point scale from inflation, no “new math” this sprint?

Edge Cases to Decide Up Front

Then you can agree on policies for these common scenarios:

• Cross team dependencies, and credit only when your team’s slice meets DoD and handoffs are explicit.
• Production incidents,and track them separately as unplanned work (do not pretend they were part of the plan).

A Worked Example

Sprint planning commitment 8 stories, 40 points total, including a 10 percent buffer for expected small bugs.

During the sprint:

• A severity one incident consumes two days, and the team fixes it as unplanned work worth 5 points
• One committed story turns out to be larger and is split: half done and half carried over.
• The product adds a small must have fix worth 3 points.

End of sprint:

• Completed stories from commitment (30 points)
• Unplanned completed work (8 points)
• Split story, zero points credited this sprint
• Commitment denominator remains 40 (unless if one of the untouched committed stories was explicitly removed mid-sprint)

Say-Do Ratio

• Numerator (30 completed points that were part of the commitment)
• Denominator (40 committed points)
• Ratio (75%)

Automating the Calculation

If you use Jira, Azure Boards, or similar, a simple query can export the committed set and the completed set by sprint boundary. You can add a tag at planning such as “Committed-Sprint-27.” Your automation only counts issues with that tag in the numerator and denominator, which keeps mid sprint adds from silently inflating the ratio.

Best Practices to Improve the Say-Do Ratio

Improving the Say-Do Ratio is less about trying harder, more about designing a system that makes the reliable thing the easy thing.

During Planning, Calibrate the Promise

Use historical data. If your median delivered points for the last eight sprints is 32, for instance,do not commit 55 because optimism feels good. Commit 32 to 36, and then list stretch work separately.Also, you can leave space for reality, and reserve a small percentage of capacity for interrupts. If the buffer is unused by day four, explicitly agree to pull the next highest priority item.

During the Sprint, Optimize for Flow and Finishing

Limit WIP, for the simple reason that too many items in progress kills finishing. You should make it a habit to swarm on near done work rather than starting new threads.Guard your focus time as well by bunching meetings together and protecting uninterrupted blocks for engineering. Lots of context switches quietly steal points from your denominator!

Between Sprints, Learn as a Team

Retrospect with the data, bring the ratio trend, the list of unplanned items, and any carryovers into the retrospective. Ask what one policy change would have improved the outcome.

Team and Organizational Levers

Stabilizing your team membership basically works by rotating people in and out every sprint destabilizes velocity and the Say-Do Ratio. If change is unavoidable, you can lower commitments during the transition and make that explicit.

Common Pitfalls and Misconceptions About Say-Do Ratio

A metric gets dangerous when it forgets it is a proxy. The Say-Do Ratio is no exception. Goodhart’s Law in Agile Clothing. When a metric becomes a target, it stops being a good metric. If leadership fixates on 100% every sprint, teams will just learn to undercommit. The number climbs, sure, but the value delivered does not. Keep your eye on predictability and customer outcomes, and not on making the line hit a single point.

Apples to Oranges, Cross Team Comparisons

Don’t compare Say-Do Ratios across teams as if they were exam scores either. Teams have different levels of uncertainty, along with different domains and different amounts of external interruption. Compare a team to its own history, and not to its neighbors.

Quality Blindness

A perfect ratio with poor quality is no good. If a team meets commitments by skipping tests or rushing code reviews, you will pay with escaped defects later. Pair the Say-Do Ratio with quality signals so you do not incentivize corner cutting.

Changing the Scale Mid Flight

Repointing everything to a new story point scale resets your baseline. If you need to recalibrate, do it deliberately at a milestone and mark the charts. Otherwise, the ratio will tell a confusing story for several sprints.

Weaponizing the Metric

Never use the Say-Do Ratio to judge individuals. Agile delivery is a team sport. If the number turns into a stick, you will create a culture of sandbagging and silence around risk. That’s not nice to have!

Beyond the Say-Do Ratio: Other Agile Metrics to Track

Don’t run a team with a single metric. A balanced set gives you depth perception. Velocity and Throughput Velocity (or points per sprint) is what shows capacity trends. Throughput, or the count of completed items, will complement velocity in kanban settings or for teams that avoid points.

You can also pair either with Say-Do to see both how much and how predictably.

Cycle Time and Lead Time

Cycle time measures how long it takes an item to go from in progress to done. Lead time measures request to delivery. If your Say-Do Ratio is fine but lead time is growing, your customers still wait longer, plain and simple.

Flow Efficiency and WIP

Flow efficiency compares active time to total elapsed time. Low flow efficiency means lots of waiting, which is usually due to dependencies or queues. Limiting WIP and addressing bottlenecks here will move all your delivery metrics in the right direction.

Defect and Stability Signals

Track escaped defects, change failure rate, mean time to recovery, and incident counts. A strong Say-Do Ratio that correlates with stable quality is the right story.

Outcome and Value Measures

Adoption, revenue impact, and customer satisfaction scores, always remind everyone why you are shipping in the first place. Use Say-Do to manage the promise, and then you can make use of outcome metrics to judge whether the promise mattered.

Building a Culture of Commitment and Delivery

The Say-Do Ratio in Agile is not a silver bullet. It’s more like a mirror. That’s because it reflects how honest your planning is, how disciplined your execution is, and how well your system supports finishing work. Keep the definition simple and strict, freeze the commitment at planning, count only what is truly done, and annotate the number with context every sprint.