Sprint estimation handling after QA increase

Question

Long story short: we had a team of 3 devs and 1 QA working in a stable rhythm of a two-week sprint of 50 story points. We discussed increasing the team by one dev and 1 QA with the PO. The QA was added to the team, but the developer will not be added anymore due to various reasons.

Now, of course, the PO is asking if we can increase the number of story points, considering the team has increased by 1 QA. This, of course, is an odd situation as most of the tasks we estimate require development, and since the development capacity is the same, we cannot estimate more. But from his side, he probably also cannot 'accept' that team has increased, but estimations are the same. So what are the common solutions to this?

The way I see it, a QA can handle some non-dev tickets like documentation, research, etc. So one way to satisfy both parties is for the next sprints to have one or two additional tickets (besides the 30 estimated ones) with the condition that those 1-2 are tickets that only require QA work. Any other suggestions?

Answer 1

I think I would maybe pull in at most one more small story for the first sprint they participate in. It might be better to not pull any in, and just let them pair with someone for a sprint or two.

Whether you pull in a new story or not, be sure to talk about this at the next retro. Did the new person speed the team up or slow the team down? Remember that the team velocity is a team velocity, so it's up to the team to decide if they are ready to pull in more stories in the next sprint.

I recommend you ramp up slowly after that first sprint. If you find room at the end of the sprint, that's a signal that you might be able to pull in an additional story at the next sprint. You won't have to guess if you can pull in more stories, the statistics from the sprint will tell you.