I Used to Be an Agile Mastermind

I used to boast about my agile prowess. Picture 26 different scrum teams under my wings and more than 20 stakeholders lined up with big ideas. This felt like an assembly line for projects: they’d come in half-baked or sometimes fully formed, and I would be the program manager tasked with checking every legal requirement, ensuring we had approval from multiple departments, then confirming that the architecture and technology made sense. My days were spent making sure each project was ready to be worked on.

We’d meticulously verify requirements, get the business side to finalize their plans, and try to align everyone. Then we’d race to see how many projects could be completed in a single year. I vividly remember taking pride in finishing 58 projects in one year when the previous year we only did 22. Naturally, it felt like the hallmark of true agile success—lots of output, lots of features, lots of everything. Yet, behind the scenes, I had no real clarity on which of these projects were actually moving the needle toward our big revenue goals. I saw business metrics mentioned in passing—like the $100 million revenue target—but I had zero visibility into how the features we built tied to hitting it. It was all about getting stuff done, not measuring real impact.

The Endless Parade of Ideas & Half-Baked Projects

In that environment, we had a constant flood of feature requests. One stakeholder wanted to speed up a particular workflow, another demanded a new user interface, while another pitched an entirely new product. Everything was funneled through my system: (1) Stakeholders propose features, (2) I coordinate and set up the pipeline, (3) Engineering teams churn out code. We measured success by sheer volume—velocity in scrum terms. That big jump from 22 completed projects to 58 was our proud victory.

However, as Easy Agile’s research shows, there’s a big shift away from simply ‘doing Agile’ to truly ‘being Agile.’ The difference is that just pumping out features may not mean the product drives business value. According to their predictions for 2025, organizations are returning to core agile principles. They’re focusing on connecting completed work directly to strategic, meaningful goals. But back then, we prioritized output above everything else, rarely asking if the finished features were actually changing customer behavior or generating more revenue.

Realizing That Output Alone Doesn’t Pay the Bills

At some point, reality struck. I looked up at the end of a year and thought, “We got 58 projects done. Great. But what was the impact?” We’d see big statements about reaching $100 million in revenue, but we had never studied how our releases factored into that number. That was the moment it became painfully obvious: Our agile achievements did not necessarily translate to success for the business, something Kroolo’s ‘Mastering Agile Project Management in 2025’ also emphasizes. Agile alone can’t solve the bigger question of whether we’re building the right things.

When Bain & Company says 90% of R&D investments fail to meet their business objectives, it rings true. We were guilty of that—just a big feature factory. We dumped resources into dozens of items without a structured link to the goals. According to The Green Dot Group, a crucial step to avoid this pitfall is ensuring all project spending sits squarely within well-defined strategic objectives. Otherwise, you’re simply pouring money into an untracked bucket.

The 9% Alignment Reality

At one point, I realized that maybe only 30% of what we worked on had a real shot at connecting to the company’s core strategies. And no one was measuring whether those projects delivered any significant return. That implies potentially 9% of our projects were truly both aligned and impactful. It was a chilling revelation. In a scenario where $20 million gets spent yearly, you might be effectively tossing away $18 million. Munich Re notes that 70% of digital transformation initiatives don’t produce the intended impact, which aligns with my experience back then. I saw excessive investment in the wrong things simply because the process of idea in, feature out was on autopilot.

This idea of wasteful spending haunted me. I thought about the giant lineup of completed tickets every quarter—some were brilliant moves, but many likely fell flat in producing real outcomes for customers or the company. It was a moment of clarity that forced me to ask: “How can I align our resources to the goals that matter? How can I measure whether the things we build have a measurable business impact?”

Shifting to Real Business Value

Eventually, I moved from celebrating quantity to obsessing about quality—quality in terms of what we delivered to the business. As Kroolo’s guide points out, agile is definitely powerful for adaptability. But let’s face it: Agile alone doesn’t magically ensure your work has strategic relevance. The pivot, for me, was about mapping every project back to metrics that drive growth—like increasing average cart value, boosting checkout speed, or improving user engagement.

We began slicing projects in new ways. Instead of just labeling a request as “Feature X for stakeholder Y,” we’d label it “Effort to improve average cart size from $50 to $60.” That shift looks small on paper, but it changed everything. The entire initiative had a targeted business outcome. Suddenly, the conversation became: “Does this feature help us achieve that increase in average cart size?” If not, we’d cut it.

Are We Measuring the Right Things?

Before, we kept track of sprint velocity, burndown charts, and how many tickets we squeezed into each release. But these metrics, while valuable, didn’t speak to business performance. That’s where a more outcome-focused approach came in. As The Green Dot Group suggests, if you’re not measuring business impact, you’re flying blind. It’s about tying feature delivery to revenue, cost savings, or even intangible behavioral changes that might lead to strategic advantages. It takes discipline, but it’s worth it.

For example, if we introduced a new checkout flow to reduce the steps from five to three, we’d track how many people made it through that flow and measure if revenue per session went up. This kind of result-based planning became our guiding star. It’s exactly the kind of evolution that Easy Agile describes: pivoting to metrics that matter while keeping teams adaptively agile in execution.

Confident Bets Over Shiny Objects

Once we started focusing on actual business metrics, shiny ideas that had nothing to do with strategic goals were often shelved. We used to chase random suggestions from senior leaders simply because of their position. Now, we’d push back and say, “This is interesting, but how does it boost our weekly revenue, reduce churn, or strengthen brand loyalty?” Without a compelling reason, we moved on to a more viable project.

This is what I call switching from “shiny objects” to “confident bets.” If an idea seems promising, we run it through a structured evaluation, look at potential ROI, and see if it aligns with the strategic drivers. If it does, we green-light it. If not, we hold off. As Easy Agile notes, teams that incorporate Lean practices and emphasize technical excellence avoid the trap of perpetual rework that drains resources. Efficient, validated ideas typically end up costing less and bringing more value in the long run.

The Three-Part Action Plan

Everyone asks how we can put this into practice. Here’s the approach that turned things around for me and my teams:

1. Strategic Alignment: Make sure every project ties directly to measurable goals. If you aim for a $100 million revenue milestone, spell out the levers—like boosting average cart value or reducing cart abandonment. Then, confirm each feature addresses one (or more) of these levers. According to Kroolo’s analytics, a clear link between projects and higher-level business objectives improves success rates significantly.
2. Disciplined Validation: Before building anything, confirm the logic with marketing, sales, engineering, and customer success. Don’t let an idea pass just because a top executive likes it. Gather data, gauge potential impact, and align across teams. Tools like The Green Dot Group’s Business Strategy Consulting can help standardize this process, ensuring that each idea’s feasibility and potential ROI are well-defined.
3. Focused Execution: Once validated, teams must keep collaborating to deliver features that genuinely address those strategic goals. This is where the agile methodologies shine—rapid iterations, quick adaptability, frequent check-ins. As we refine, we keep measuring the results, verifying if we’re hitting those intended metrics.

This shift also involves internal education. Engineers, designers, product owners—everyone on the team needs to understand the overarching value. They should feel empowered to ask, “Will this truly drive the targeted outcome?” That level of ownership fosters an environment where good ideas get traction and poor ideas fail fast.

AI as the Compass for Product Roadmaps

Artificial intelligence is stepping in to reshape how we plan. Today, AI can quickly assess user behavior data, estimate potential ROI, or even forecast how a particular feature might influence user retention. It can process historical project metrics, help identify patterns, and predict where the largest payoff lies. Kroolo’s Mastering Agile Project Management in 2025 hints at a future where teams leverage AI to sharpen backlog prioritization. And The Green Dot Group’s emphasis on modern consulting frameworks points to AI as a major tool for data-driven decisions.

That doesn’t mean we abandon creativity. Data alone won’t capture every insight. But combining gut instinct with AI-driven numbers gives you a solid foundation to decide whether a project is worth pursuing. It’s about harnessing technology to guide which direction you take, then using human ingenuity to build something meaningful once you get there.

Tying It All to Tangible Growth

Here’s the big difference between then and now: In the old days, finishing 58 projects was an accomplishment in itself. Today, I’d be asking, “Did the changes we launched drive growth in new user signups? Did they boost the average cart? Did they reduce friction in the checkout flow?” If the numbers didn’t move, we’d figure out why.

The payoff of this approach is that everyone—C-suite, managers, engineers—has clarity on what success looks like. People are more motivated when their work makes a real difference. Stakeholders are happier when they see tangible metrics improving. And the business thrives because it focuses on the items that truly matter. This resonates with The Green Dot Group’s mantra that leadership training and data-oriented coaching can unite entire organizations around outcome-based objectives.

The Way Forward: Where Agile Is Heading

The agile world is changing, and so are we. Easy Agile’s forecasts point to a leaner set of practices, emphasizing cross-functional teamwork, continuous learning, and minimal ceremony. The goal is to stay adaptable but also to keep a clear eye on measurable impact.

These emerging trends align with the realization that velocity-centric success stories can lull teams into a false sense of security. Instead, organizations are starting to measure real outcomes. We see more remote work structures, more reliance on AI for real-time data insights, and a push for bold but carefully validated projects. The result is an environment where agile is a mindset guiding every part of the company—from product development to marketing—rather than a checklist to get through each sprint.

Parting Thoughts on Owning Our Business Outcomes

Looking back, I realize the biggest shift in my career was learning that simply building a lot of stuff won’t keep you afloat forever. Cranking out new features month after month feels awesome, but if they’re not delivering measurable results, the business may be burning through capital with little return. We risk building for building’s sake and ignoring the bottom line.

As a product leader, you owe it to your team and your company to ask hard questions. Are you measuring the right metrics? Are those metrics tied to growth and sustainability? Are you prioritizing informed decisions over guesswork?

That’s the pivot: be agile in how you deliver, but even more critical, be strategic in what you deliver. If you’re ready to shift your mindset or want tools and guidance to tie agile outputs to business outcomes, check out iteright.com for strategic solutions, and see their solutions and pricing for a roadmap to successful alignment. Resources like Kroolo and Easy Agile can provide further insight into refining your methodology, while The Green Dot Group highlights how to overcome project pitfalls and keep organizations laser-focused on results. The ultimate goal is to keep building—but build for a reason, and measure whether that reason is truly served by each feature you release.