James Carr

I really don’t know why I always have to repeat this time and time again, over and over. It feels like every time I turn around there’s always someone who thinks/acts like velocity is a productivity metric. Enough Already! It’s not!

All that it really is is a number that identifies the capacity a team can take on in the next iteration based on the previous iterations. Basically, it’s an indicator of what a team has the capacity to do, not it’s productivity. To quote Paul Hodgetts:

“Velocity is more of a quantity of work completed metric. Useful and important, but not the sole measure of success. I think you would want a set of metrics that together help us understand our current capabilities to deliver as well as if those capabilities are changing from one point in time to another. I don’t believe there is one magic “agility number” to measure [productivity].”

Just wish there was someway to stop people from thinking the sky is falling and productivity is going down because of a decrease in velocity.