Engineering velocity
I get it. The frustration is palpable. A team that used to cook along now appears to be stuck in molasses. They get slower and slower, and it's confounding to everyone waiting for the next major feature to be delivered, or even just looking at a burndown chart. It can be confounding and frustrating to the team, too.
But I'm here to tell you, the frustration is likely misplaced: Teams slowing down as they mature and grow is not only normal, it may be better.
After looking at the velocity of dozens -- possibly hundreds -- of teams over the years, and how it changes over time, here are the common threads among the "formerly fast" teams.
Everything moves a lot faster when you're a cowboy, riding breathlessly across green fields. You can shift direction on a whim, you can explore, you can strike out in bold new directions. That's fast, and it's easy. But getting from something to something good takes a lot more time and effort.
No matter what the project, from software engineering to home renovations, smart people know that the first 80% is the easy part, and the work goes quickly. But the last part -- the sorting out and polishing -- takes much, much longer.
