Tom Lieber's Microblog

Mar 15, 2021

Every single agile team I’ve ever worked on has had a conversation about increasing velocity at some point. … The manager, responding to the pressures of the business, tells the team that they need to work faster. In my experience, this is usually a self-defeating goal, because the team switches focus from delivering software to figuring out why they aren’t delivering more software. Instead of writing and reviewing code, the team sits in meetings discussing why they’re not getting more work done.

Counterintuitively, the best way to increase sprint velocity is often to spend less time thinking about it. Instead, spend more time focusing on writing quality software and ensuring the team encounters the fewest roadblocks possible.

What Is Sprint Velocity by Eric Boersma