We optimize what we measure Scrum does not say “only focus on output”, but, unfortunately, humans will optimize for what they measure. If you worry about story points & hitting your estimations, that’s what is going to consume your attention. That is what you and your team will optimize for. And that is the core critique of Scrum as it is practiced: That it focuses a product team’s attention so heavily on delivery — on building lots of features quickly & efficiently — that teams fail to focus on spending time to discover what the right thing to build is. Henry Latham, Why Scrum is killing your product optimizationagilefeatures
Do they really need it? Does Google really need playful doodles to deliver the value they consistently provide in search results? Does Stripe really need to spend so much energy on the design of its site and SDK’s, which after all, are primarily for the developers that use their API’s? Does Apple really need to sweat the literally thousands of very subtle and often not consciously noticed interactions on its devices? Marty Cagan, Ensuring Excellence On Taste