The engineering manager sat across from me with a look I've seen too many times.

"I don't understand it," he said. "We have good developers. Smart people. Everyone is working hard. But we're always late. We're always behind. Every sprint feels like we're running through mud."

I asked him one question: "When was the last time you mapped how work actually flows through your team, from idea to deployed feature?"

He paused. "We have a board."

"That's not the same thing."