An Antidote to Velocity Obsession

Mike Griffiths is an experienced project manager, author and consultant who works for PMI as a subject matter expert. Before joining PMI, Mike consulted and managed innovation and technology projects throughout Europe, North and South America for 30+ years. He was co-lead for the PMBOK Guide—Seventh Edition, lead for the Agile Practice Guide, and contributor to the PMI-ACP and PMP exam content outlines. Outside of PMI, Mike maintains the websites www.LeadingAnswers.com about leading teams and www.PMillustrated.com, which teaches project management for visual learners.

  Agile  

Getting things done is great. To get things done is why we start things in the first place and why we follow through even when presented by obstacles and setbacks. We do things because they will (hopefully) bring us to some better state. So getting these things done quickly is good because we arrive at this better state sooner. We track our rate of development (velocity) as a useful measure of progress and also as a leading indicator toward when we should be done. However, focusing too much on velocity is dangerous; it leads to myopic mindsets and even moronic behavior.

Yes, velocity is good…but not at the expense of quality, goodwill or noticing subtle changes in direction. At the Agile 2012 Conference, Jim Highsmith and Pat Reed hosted a session called “Velocity is Killing Agility” that examined how velocity (which should be as much a measure of team capacity as it is a measure of their output) is being misused. When organizations overly publicize and analyze velocity, misguided attempts to “go faster” lead to gaming velocity scores and not project team improvements.

A Measurement Parallel
For the last six months, I have been using Strava.com to track my running and biking exercise. It is a social website for tracking and sharing workout performance data that creates maps, leader boards of hills climbed, point-to-point fastest times…

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