Agile Verdicts: straight answers to the arguments teams keep having
Ruling-first answers to the arguments agile teams keep having — are standups micromanagement, story points vs #NoEstimates, whether retros are worth it, and if velocity is a useful metric. We steelman both sides, then rule.
The honest answer to whether daily standups are micromanagement: not by design, but the moment the meeting is run for a manager instead of by the team, the critics are right. We steelman both sides and rule.
Neither camp wins outright. Estimate to build shared understanding and detect disagreement; don't estimate to predict a date — forecast from throughput. We steelman story points, #NoEstimates and the inventor who disowned points, then rule.
Yes — but not for the reason most teams defend them. A retro earns its hour through learning and cohesion, not a tidy list of action items. If yours only produces words, the ritual isn't the problem. We steelman the skeptics and rule.
Yes inside the team, harmful outside it. Velocity is a forecasting input the team steers by; the moment it becomes a target or a cross-team comparison it inflates and stops meaning anything. DORA left it out of the delivery metrics on purpose.