In high-performing engineering teams, momentum is often mistaken for progress. The Jira board is active. Pull requests are flying. Meetings are filled with enthusiastic status updates. Yet, weeks later, there’s no meaningful product shipped, no critical problems solved, and no customer impact felt.
Welcome to the illusion of motion.
The Productivity Mirage
Engineering, like any other field, has its rituals—standups, sprint planning, retrospectives, backlog grooming. These are designed to provide alignment, clarity, and velocity. But when followed mindlessly, they become theater.
Here’s the problem: motion looks like work. It feels like effort. But it doesn’t always lead to progress.
“Being busy is a form of laziness – lazy thinking and indiscriminate action.” Tim Ferriss
Let’s explore the false signals of productivity that trap engineering teams and how to refocus on what truly matters.
1. The Daily Standup Spiral
What It Looks Like: A 15-minute ritual turns into a 30-minute round-robin update that nobody listens to but everyone attends.
Why It Feels Productive: Everyone’s talking. Tasks are mentioned. Problems are surfaced.
Why It’s Not: If no decisions are made, no blockers removed, and no outcomes driven—it’s just ritual noise.
Fix: Make standups about intentions and obstacles, not progress theater. Better yet, replace daily standups with async updates if your team thrives in focus time.
2. Pull Request Ping-Pong
What It Looks Like: Code is in review. Then it’s not. Then it is again. And again. Approval takes days.
Why It Feels Productive: The review process is happening! Comments are being made! GitHub is alive!
Why It’s Not: The PR cycle time is now 4x longer. Engineers are stuck context-switching, waiting instead of building.
Fix: Prioritize PRs. Use pair programming or shadow reviews to shorten feedback loops. Measure review latency, not just PR count.
3. Sprint Velocity Worship
What It Looks Like: Team velocity goes up! More story points completed! More = better, right?
Why It Feels Productive: Velocity is quantifiable. It tracks motion. Managers love graphs.
Why It’s Not: Story points are estimates. Optimizing for velocity often leads to point inflation or low-impact work being prioritized.
Fix: Shift the conversation from “how many points?” to “what value was delivered?” Link engineering effort to business and user outcomes.
4. Backlog Grooming Without Pruning
What It Looks Like: A team spends hours refining and re-estimating stories that may never see daylight.
Why It Feels Productive: The backlog is being maintained! Cards are being updated! Estimates are fresh!
Why It’s Not: A bloated backlog creates noise. Engineering time spent grooming dead ideas is time not spent solving real problems.
Fix: Treat your backlog like a fridge—clean it regularly. If it’s been in there for 6 months, throw it out or archive it.
5. Meetings That Manage the Calendar, Not the Work
What It Looks Like: Status meetings. Coordination meetings. Sync meetings. Too many meetings.
Why It Feels Productive: Calendars are full. Everyone is in the loop. Talking is happening.
Why It’s Not: The work happens between meetings. Constant coordination is a sign that your system doesn’t scale.
Fix: Audit your recurring meetings every month. Kill the ones that don’t drive decisions or unblock work. Default to async.
Reclaiming Real Productivity
Engineering isn’t about looking busy. It’s about solving problems. It’s about impact—on the codebase, on the user, and on the business.
To shift from motion to progress, ask:
- Are we solving the right problems?
- Are we creating artifacts or outcomes?
- Are our rituals serving us—or are we serving the rituals?
Teams that focus on outcomes over optics tend to ship better products, foster happier engineers, and waste far less time pretending to be busy.
Final Thought
Busyness is easy to fake. Progress is not.
If your engineering team feels like it’s running on a treadmill, sweating but staying in place—it’s time to step off, recalibrate, and walk with purpose.
It real difficult to find out.