How have you seen velocity or story points used (or misused) in your organization, and what impact did it have on team morale, transparency, or trust?

Agile Estimating Ethics

Stelian ROMAN Project Manager| MicroSafety Carlingford, New South Wales, Australia

In the fast-paced world of Agile software development, metrics like story points and velocity are commonly used to estimate, plan, and track progress. However, when organizations and leaders start treating these metrics as absolute measures of productivity, they fall into a dangerous trap—one that not only undermines the integrity of the data but can also violate fundamental ethical principles, particularly the pillar of Honesty in data reporting. This blog post delves into the nuances of metric integrity, the pitfalls of semiquantitative metrics, and the ethical responsibilities that come with reporting and interpreting team performance.

Blog post ProjectManagement.com - Metric Integrity, Semiquantitative Traps & Ethics: The Fallacy of Velocity as a Performance Metric

Posted: Jun 15, 2026 1:18 AM

Luis Branco CEO| Business Insight, Consultores de Gestão, Ldª Carcavelos, Lisboa, Portugal

I have seen situations where velocity gradually evolved from a planning aid into a performance target. Interestingly, the greatest impact was not on delivery itself, but on the quality of the information flowing through the organization.

Once people feel evaluated by a metric, attention often shifts from understanding reality to managing perceptions of reality.
At that point, the metric stops being a source of insight and starts becoming a source of distortion.

A valuable reminder that the true purpose of measurement is not to control behaviour, but to improve understanding, learning and decision-making.

Posted: Jun 15, 2026 4:28 AM

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How have you seen velocity or story points used (or misused) in your organization, and what impact did it have on team morale, transparency, or trust?

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