Originally published at theendofcoding.com.
It's the last week of the quarter. The team is going to miss two of the five committed epics — they already know it. The retro that follows will use the word "velocity" eleven times and the word "capacity" zero. The plan they committed to was a target with a spreadsheet stapled to it. The capacity model — the actual arithmetic of who would be available for how many days, doing what kind of work — never existed.
Frederick Brooks wrote the line that explains why, fifty years ago, in a chapter that has aged better than most:
"How does a project get to be a year late? … One day at a time."
— Frederick P. Brooks, Jr., The Mythical Man-Month (1975) (source)
