Velocity starts out useful. Team estimates work in story points. After a few sprints you know roughly how much the team can handle. Good for planning. That’s all it was ever meant to do.

Then a manager sees the number. “Can we get velocity higher?” Now it’s a target. The moment velocity becomes a target, the game changes.

A task that was a 3 becomes a 5. An 8 becomes a 13. Nobody is lying exactly. They’re just estimating “more carefully.” The chart goes up. Standup feels good. Leadership is impressed.

But the team isn’t shipping any more than before. The same number of features go out the door. The only thing that changed is the numbers on the sticky notes.

This is Goodhart’s Law in action. The metric stopped measuring real output the moment someone tried to maximize it.

Use velocity for sprint planning if it helps your team. But never use it to evaluate performance, compare teams, or set targets. The moment you do, it becomes fiction.