Practices
5
min read
Shipping cadence beats velocity
Velocity tells you how fast a team moved last week. Cadence tells you whether anyone can rely on it next week. Only one of them survives contact with reality.
The Muster Team
Product
Velocity is a measure of output over a fixed window. Cadence is a measure of rhythm. They sound like the same idea until you look at two teams with identical throughput and completely different reputations.
Predictability is a feature
A team that ships something every three days is easier to plan around than a team that ships nine times in a fortnight and then nothing for two weeks, even when the totals match. Everyone downstream, from support to sales to the person writing release notes, builds their own routine on top of yours.
Cadence degrades earlier
In our data, the gaps between merges widen well before total output falls. By the time velocity drops, whatever caused it has usually been in place for a month. Watching the rhythm gives you a chance to ask what changed while the answer is still fresh.
How to improve it without gaming it
Shrink the unit of work until it fits comfortably inside your rhythm, rather than stretching the rhythm to fit the work. The point is not to commit more often; it is to keep the distance between ready and merged short enough that nothing has time to go stale.
