Reason #2: Velocity obsession
A bunch of cries for help philosophical reflections with no answers rhetorical questions on METRICS
I have soooo many questions:
*Why do managers are so obsessed with tracking someone's busyness?
Why do they pray for Velocity like.. it's a #1 metric (and the only one) for any agile project? Like.. seriously? Who told u that?
They are initially unreliable, measuring the basic team's activities, might be useful only for internal forecasting (MIGHT, but definitely not SHOULD)... they are so easily adjustable - like, "we've doubled our velocity by increasing our estimation grade".. and still Managers don't get it and even keep on comparing teams, based on their velocity (cause it's so convenient), extracting personal velocity (my favorite!), building forecasts and unrealistic expectations (cause it's so silly to expect no changes on initially unpredictable environment and tell everyone, that u're "agile") Gosh
*Why do managers pay so much attention to the outputs, but never try measuring actual outcomes, the real value?
I have a story about that. I was on a project, where main measure of success for my teams was.. Predictability rate (Planned vs. Delivered) Every quarter I was providing my PM with results of my 3 teams. Team A reached 3 out of 4, Team B had 4 out of 5 and Team C completed just 1 out of 5... and my Manager called me out and requested a detailed list of reasonings on why is my Team C so low-performing? I was accused of the Team C spoiling the overall score in the domain for up to 20%... and the thing is - they weren't The thing is - all 3 month Team C was involved into the post-release troubleshooting and had spent 76% of their capacity on fixing critical issues. And thanks to my own system of measuring - I had numbers to prove the Teams' actual value. Yes, they didn't manage to deliver all expected features, but on the other hand - they kept production line stable. What's more important after giant release?
Have I tried to initiate any changes on that? Surely. Did it succeed? Partially. On Domain level - yes, on Company level - no
So, let's get back to the question. Why do managers prefer staying stubborn and seek outputs instead of bringing effort to check qualitative insights, process flow and customer value?.. Like being busy is good, but being productive is much better, isn't it?
Yes,
It takes time
It requires deeper involvement and collaboration in the company
It requires motivation and proper leadership
It requires consistency and shared understanding
But there are sooooo many cool things u can do when u're facing the right direction:
Lean Flow metrics (high five, Kanban!) with a wide range of its variabilities, based on Throughput, WIP, Cycle & Lead time
Quality metrics, like Test Automation coverage, Defects Cycle time, Mean time to recover, Deployment Frequency
Value-oriented metrics, like Customer Satisfaction Gap, Usage Index, Potential Market Share
Ability to Innovate metrics, like Technical Debt, Time spent merging code between branches, Innovation Rate
Team health & Culture metrics, like Kniberg's health checks or eNPS
There's whole list of awesome frameworks and multi-level approaches created already, like DORA, SPACE or Evidence-Based Management (my favorite).. then, why not to use them?
WHY?!
