Velocity stopped being a useful signal
Put 2 teams side by side on a velocity chart. One shipped 12 things nobody uses. The other shipped 3 that moved the business. On the page, the first team looks stronger.
Velocity was a useful metric because shipping was hard. When a team pushed features out quickly and reliably, that told you something real about the team. Speed stood in for competence because speed was scarce.
Agents made speed cheap. A small team, or one capable person, now ships at a rate that would have looked heroic 2 years ago. Once anyone can ship that fast, speed stops telling you much about competence, and the proxy breaks. Velocity metrics are sticky, though. The number stays on the page, and a high one can now mean the wrong things, produced quickly.
So ask a different question of every launch. Did it land? Shipping is now the baseline, and the useful read is what happened after it went out. Each launch carries a status set from measured numbers. Landed means the number you said would move, moved. Watch means the signal is still thin. Stalled means it shipped and nothing happened.
The status only works if someone names that number before the launch goes out. Pick it afterwards and you can usually find something that went up. Naming it first also gives watch a plain meaning. The number exists, and there's too little data on it to call yet.
Stalled is where teams flinch, and it's the whole value of the exercise. A stalled launch that nobody marks stays in the roadmap deck as a win. The team keeps building on top of it, and it isn't carrying any weight. Marking it costs one uncomfortable sentence and saves a quarter.
None of this means slow down. Anyone can be fast now. The teams worth copying are fast and pointed at the right things, and they can show you which of their last 10 launches landed. Ask your own team for that list, with each launch marked landed, watch or stalled and the number behind each mark. If the list is hard to produce, start with the next launch and name its number before it ships.