velocity

Intermediate 💻 Tech / IT

Definition

In the startup world, the speed at which your development team can actually ship features, measured in story points or whatever agile metric your project manager is obsessed with this quarter. Unlike regular speed, velocity has direction—ideally forward, though some teams seem to excel at moving sideways. It's the number that determines whether you'll make your demo day deadline or spend the weekend surviving on Red Bull and regret.

Example Usage

Our velocity dropped by 40% after we hired three new engineers who spent all their time in onboarding meetings.

Source: Agile software development terminology

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