The Turing Point: When the Old Metrics Fail You

Jim Highsmith is co-author of the Agile Manifesto with 60 years of experience as an IT manager, product manager, project manager, consultant, software developer, and agile pioneer.

  Agile   Artificial Intelligence  

Scene 1: Thursday Morning – Strategy Room
Arin, VP of Strategic Outcomes, sat at the head of the table. Known for her calm under pressure and ability to cut through complexity, she rarely missed the signal in the noise.

But this morning, something was off.

No one said it out loud, but they were used to dashboards arguing with intuition. Lately, though, the gaps felt wider—and harder to explain away.

Jordan (Director of Delivery): “Two major deliverables done, budget burn’s clean, and velocity is trending up. From a metrics perspective, we’re green across the board.”

Devon (Team Operations Lead): “Then why does it feel like we’re losing?”

That stopped the room cold. Arin glanced toward Ethan, the Metrics and Systems Director who could spot a flawed metric a mile away, already flipping to a different dashboard.

Arin: “Say more.”

Devon: “We shipped. But uptake’s low. Customer feedback is...polite. That last sprint? We hit all our numbers but missed the point.”

Ethan: “Metrics mismatch.”

“We’ve evolved from the Iron Triangle to the Agile Triangle, but even those models are starting to feel brittle,” he said. “They tell us what to optimize, not what to sense.”

“We’re trying to navigate with a ruler when what we need …

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