Measuring engineering velocity misses all the value
infoworld.com
infoworld.com
Articles like this frustrate me. Is the goal of scrum to deliver more points? (Maybe it is?). As a pointy-haired boss, I measure velocity, but that's because I want to do some planning and try to infer a rough # of sprints for work to get done. In fact, I view increased velocity as a warning sign, since I want to make sure that my teams aren't overworking to make up for poor planning somewhere. My "ideal" velocity is a consistent one, not an ever-increasing one. Now, if we get more efficient and can ship more stuff for the same number of points...
Most engineering VPs/directors I've interacted with have been super excited about pushing more crap out faster. Just today an engineering director was pressuring me to get some change out quickly characterizing it as a "simple routing change" when in fact it requires separate prs to 3 code bases all of which are in the core revenue path for the company. He comes by it honestly though, the top of the company really values hard driving type A's. A much more senior IC to me said "the key to this place is just to talk loud and aggressively on meetings."
I don't work at some out of the way oddball company either, this is a fortune 50 that I'm pretty sure is representative of legacy companies trying to make a go of it at digital transformation of their business!