Direction matters more than velocity
Popular saying, in my words
Speed in the wrong direction only gets you lost faster. Check the heading before you push the throttle.
Teams love to measure velocity. Story points per sprint, commits per week, features per quarter. Velocity is easy to count, so it becomes the thing we optimise.
But velocity is a vector: it only means something together with a direction. A team that ships twice as fast towards the wrong product does not get there sooner. It gets further away, with more code to throw out.
The cheapest moment to fix direction is before you accelerate. A one-hour conversation with a real user, a prototype nobody has to maintain, a written list of what you will not build: these feel slow, and they save months.
Once the heading is right, then speed matters, and that is where good engineering earns its keep: automated tests, fast feedback and quality gates that let you move quickly without breaking the direction you chose.
Try this
Before your next big push, write down in one sentence who it is for and what will be different for them when it ships. If you cannot, you are optimising velocity.