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Friday, April 24, 2015

Its high time that we stop using Velocity

Velocity in an Agile environment is the most misused-used and misinterpreted word/metric.  The key issue is, teams and stakeholders interpret Velocity as a productivity measurement rather than capacity of the team.

I don’t blame the team or the managers. But the “word” itself. If we look at the synonyms for Velocity(see the screenshot below), all of them point to quickness, momentum, acceleration, which naturally encourages people to connect this with “productivity”.  

 Velocity

Google for Acceleration or Velocity and one would find following images… These images push people to think more of a competition, race and winning rather than a team work or a capacity.

image image image

I think we should stop using the word velocity and start using the word that creates some mental image to show the “team’s capacity”.

image

Do you think this is a fair call ?

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