I too find velocity to be one of the dumbest aspects of Agile. It takes the stupid of story points and doubles down on uselessness and arbitrariness. Velocity

I too find velocity to be one of the dumbest aspects of Agile. It takes the stupid of story points and doubles down on uselessness and arbitrariness. Velocity in physical terms is an instantaneous measure. It's the same in Agile, you've done X things in Y time. But that ignores the context of those X tasks and the context of Y time. The X+1 task might turn out more difficult or have some other challenge that makes it take longer. Time keeps passing so at time Y+2 the velocity measurement is lower than before. Now all the PMs and other team members jump in demanding answers which now makes the task take even longer. As you mention, some span of time can see team members out or unavailable. So the velocity is "low" but rarely is that context captured or bubbled up the management chain. So your team has "low velocity" which ends up generating worthless meetings, bad reviews, or all sorts of problems.