Why Your Sprint Velocity Isn't Telling You What You Think It Is (And What to Measure Instead)

Once upon a time, there was a brilliant developer who got everything they thought they wanted – a promotion to CTO.

Every day, they would look at their dashboard showing impressive numbers: 47 story points completed, 95% code coverage, zero critical bugs in staging. The team was working harder than ever.

But one day, the board asked a simple question: “When will feature X be ready for our biggest client?”

Our CTO stared at their beautiful metrics and realised… they had no idea.

Because of this, they started digging deeper. Why were they hitting all their targets but still missing deadlines? Why did their impressive velocity mean nothing when it came to actual delivery?

Because of this, they discovered the truth: they were measuring how busy their team was, not how much value they were creating.

Until finally, they learned the secret that transformed everything: the difference between measuring activity and measuring impact.

Here’s what I’ve learned with organisations going through this exact challenge.

Measuring the software development process is hard.

Measuring in software is hard! And measuring productivity is particularly hard. And in the age of tools, the problem has worsened. We need some indication of what and how we are building software. In mid- to large organisations, we need the measures to be stable enough so we can compare against Products, Teams, etc.

Measuring the software development process is expensive:

So you want to measure only what matters for your organisation: Does marketing need to know when a feature is ready? Then scope scope-based units like velocity are not enough. For this week’s hero, I would suggest that he things of the following measurements:

• Cycle time from idea to production – How long does it take to get a feature from concept to customer hands? This tells you about your entire delivery pipeline.

• Lead time for critical fixes – When something breaks, how fast can you ship a fix? This reveals your team’s agility under pressure.

Why does this matter?

As a first-time CTO, our hero was caught between technical debt and feature delivery. The metrics above help you make the right trade-offs. When you can show investors that reducing technical debt improved cycle time by 40%, you’re speaking their language.

Your team’s productivity isn’t about working harder. It’s about working on the right things, in the right order, with the right metrics to prove it.

What metrics are you currently tracking? Are they helping you make better decisions, or just creating more noise?

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While the principles discussed here are straightforward, their effective implementation often requires a nuanced understanding of your team’s unique context. That’s where evidence-based coaching makes the difference, accelerating your journey to sustainable productivity. Let’s explore how tailored, evidence-driven strategies for measuring productivity can be applied within your organization to achieve tangible results. Reach out today, and let’s map out the first steps towards your next level of productivity.