[sixstringtheory]

> It's not used against a team or platform and it is primarily used internally by management and not so much engineering teams which I think is the right way to use it.

Absolutely. It’s the old descriptive vs normative saw. We should be very interested in measuring how productive we are. But how do we really know how productive we should be?

I think trying to answer that is hard to impossible for a developer, because you can always automate or abstract further, but the cost to do so marginally increases and you probably won’t know the full cost until it’s already realized, at which point, requirement and prediction are obviated.

I know I’ve had my fair share of negative experiences with a scrum team that wanted ever faster velocity and used burndown charts as a stick with no carrot in sight.