Velocity: The Most Abused Agile Metric Ever

Or how we turned a helpful number into a corporate scoreboard of shame

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When velocity becomes the goal instead of the guide… welcome to the burnout Olympics.
Story points are up. Morale is down. But hey, the chart looks great, right?

“We need to increase our velocity this quarter.”

Cool. Want me to work faster, lie more, or cut corners?

Welcome to the dark side of velocity — the number that started as a planning aid and ended up as a weaponized performance metric, often wielded by people who’ve never touched a user story in their lives.

In this post, we’ll break down:

• What velocity is supposed to do
• How it gets misunderstood and misused
• Why chasing it kills team health
• And how to bring it back from the dead

Let’s sprint into it. (Pun 100% intended.)

🧭 What is velocity, really?

In its purest form, velocity is a historical measure of how much work a team has completed in a given time frame (usually a sprint).