#SAFe

When team velocity is treated as a 12 week pre-committed time card, itemized bill, then when a team member is out sick or quits or is fired, and the whole team is expected to meet the same velocity (because it was a pre-declared time card/contract to deliver) then the rest of the team picks up 40 hours of work per week until a replacement is hired. If that person was a specialist, then the other specialist gets to work 80 hours a week.

Except the math doesn't work. I think this came about from someone thinking, "If you are a good moral person, you will live up to your agreements and you agree to 100 velocity points, so you will do what it takes to deliver 100 points." And for maybe 10% variations, sure, people will work late out of a sense of professionalism. But if you ask a honest person to jump 10 feet when the maximum one person can jump is 5, then they can't. Doesn't matter how honest or professional they are.

So what is going to happen. Goodhart's law on perverse incentives is going to kick in. Those velocity points are self declared monopoly money. They're not objective. They are good planning tools as long as you don't give people an incentive to lie. To minimize the risk of the maximum loss, it is now rational for *developers* to plan for 50% slack or more. To squeeze out the last 10% of efficiency, you've cut output by 50% or more.