There’s a constant pressure on PMs to ‘increase velocity.’ We’re asked for story points, burndown charts, and feature-per-sprint counts. But in our push for speed, are we measuring what truly matters?
This obsession with output can be a trap. It incentivizes shipping more over shipping the right thing. It can lead to tech debt, burnout for our engineering counterparts, and a major disconnect between the work being done and the actual user problems we’re meant to solve. When the team is primarily rewarded for closing tickets, they’ll close tickets—whether or not the solution delivers any real value.
The alternative is to shift our collective focus from outputs to outcomes. Instead of asking, ‘How much did we build?’ we should be asking, ‘What impact did we have?’ This means aligning our roadmaps with measurable goals like user adoption, retention, or satisfaction, not just a list of features. Tying engineering efforts back to the ‘why’ is crucial. Platforms that help centralize user feedback and connect it to development, like we’re building at https://leera.io, help ensure that every sprint is genuinely moving the needle on key business objectives. It’s about creating a culture where engineering is a strategic partner, not a feature factory.
How do you measure and communicate the success of your product teams without falling into the trap of vanity metrics like velocity?