5 Actionable strategies to shift the focus from Velocity to Value
Is your leadership obsessed with velocity, but you're struggling to deliver real value? Here's how to shift the focus from speed to impact, without sacrificing quality or burning out your team.
As a Scrum Master, Product Owner, or Agile Leader, one of the most common pressures you’ll face is when leadership starts asking questions like:
"Why is your velocity dropping?"
"How do we get this velocity number up?"
"Why aren't we delivering at the same pace as before?"
It seems harmless at first. After all, velocity is a key metric in Agile — but here’s the thing: focusing too much on velocity can be detrimental. It can lead to unhealthy work patterns, burnout, and a lack of focus on what really matters: value delivery.
If you're facing this challenge, you're not alone.
Here’s how to shift the focus and communicate better with leadership, so you can align velocity with value.
Why Leadership's Focus on Velocity Can Be Problematic
Velocity is a measure of how much work a team completes in a sprint, but when it becomes the focal point of a team’s performance, several issues arise:
Unrealistic Expectations: Teams might be pressured to inflate their velocity, leading to work that isn’t sustainable.
Misalignment with Business Goals: Velocity doesn’t tell you anything about the value delivered or the impact of the work done. It can easily become a misleading proxy for performance.
Quality Overlooked: Teams could end up prioritizing speed over quality, increasing the chances of defects or rework later on.
Burnout: The drive to maintain or increase velocity might lead to long hours, reduced team morale, and eventual burnout.
As a Scrum Master, your job is to help leadership understand that velocity is only one part of the story.
Strategy 1: Educate on the True Purpose of Velocity
Action Steps:
Start by explaining that velocity is just a tool: It helps track team capacity, but it doesn’t measure value. Share how the real goal is to deliver value and outcomes, not just speed.
Use examples: Share real-world scenarios where focusing only on velocity has led to poor quality, missed deadlines, or frustrated teams.
Suggest a balanced set of metrics: Show that focusing on outcomes like customer satisfaction, business value delivered, or impact metrics (e.g., adoption rate, sales, customer feedback) will provide a more complete view of success.
Tip: Show leadership actual data where a decrease in velocity resulted in better value delivery. This can be more persuasive than just theory.
Strategy 2: Introduce the Concept of Flow, Not Just Speed
Action Steps:
Discuss flow-based metrics: Introduce concepts like cycle time (how long it takes to complete a task) or lead time (time from idea to delivery), which provide a clearer picture of efficiency without pressuring the team to pump out more work.
Use Flow Efficiency: Measure how much of the total cycle time is actually spent on value-added activities, not waiting or bottlenecks.
Illustrate with data: Share examples of how a well-managed flow can lead to better results and sustainable throughput.
Tip: Flow metrics give leadership insight into how work is processed, making the focus on quality and timely delivery rather than just velocity.
Strategy 3: Align Velocity with Business Goals
Action Steps:
Connect velocity to customer impact: Share how a focus on outcomes will lead to better customer satisfaction, faster feedback loops, and business growth.
Set business-oriented goals: Work with leadership to create key results like increasing customer retention, launching new features, or reducing support tickets. Use velocity as one input toward these outcomes, but emphasize the bigger picture.
Use value-stream mapping to show how teams are creating value and how velocity fits within the overall delivery pipeline.
Tip: When leadership sees that velocity is only part of the puzzle, they will appreciate the need for quality and alignment with strategic goals.
Strategy 4: Advocate for Sustainable Pace and Team Health
Action Steps:
Highlight the cost of burnout: Share how unsustainable velocity can lead to low team morale, burnout, and eventually reduced productivity.
Share metrics on team happiness and engagement: Suggest tracking team satisfaction and work-life balance to measure the well-being of the team. Teams that feel healthy are more productive and engaged in the long run.
Explain the importance of continuous improvement: Focus on Kaizen or Iterative Improvements. By prioritizing sustainable pace, the team will continuously grow in efficiency over time without jeopardizing their health.
Tip: Share case studies or anecdotes where maintaining a sustainable velocity improved overall team performance and long-term output.
Strategy 5: Create a Culture of Quality Over Quantity
Action Steps:
Shift the conversation towards quality: Show leadership that focusing on well-done work and meeting customer needs is better than rushing through tasks.
Use quality metrics: Suggest metrics like defect density, test coverage, or customer feedback to demonstrate that value and quality matter more than just output.
Focus on refinement and feedback loops: Ensure that the team gets frequent feedback on what they’re delivering. This will help them improve their work and align better with customer needs.
Tip: Track how improving quality in each sprint leads to better outcomes in later sprints, such as reduced rework or more feature adoption.
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