When every dev is just doing the next ticket, who’s steering the ship?
Let me guess how your day started.
You opened your laptop, fired up the sprint board, and grabbed the next ticket in the “Ready” column. Maybe it was a small feature. Maybe a bug. Either way, you didn’t write it, you didn’t scope it, and you definitely didn’t question it. Because that’s not how it works here.
We are Ticket-Driven Developers now.
Thinking is out. Throughput is in.
Tickets are moving. Morale is not.
The Anti-Pattern of “Just Do the Ticket”#
At first, it looks like productivity.
Nobody’s blocked. Work is moving. Standups are mercifully short.
But look closer and it’s more like a conveyor belt at a factory that forgot what it’s building. Features ship, bugs creep back in, and the codebase becomes an archaeological dig of short-term fixes and forgotten context.
The devs?
They’ve stopped thinking beyond the task in front of them. Because every time someone does, they get told:
“Yeah, good thought, but just stick to the ticket for now.”
Translation: Don’t rock the boat.
How We Train Developers to Stop Thinking#
Ask why the feature matters? You’re overstepping.
Suggest a refactor while in the code? Not in scope.
Improve naming, extract duplication, or add a helpful comment? That’s gold plating now.
We say we hire smart developers, but then reward the ones who colour inside the lines. Every sprint becomes a speedrun through predefined cards. The only skill that improves is JIRA fluency.
Eventually, even the good devs stop caring.
They stop asking questions.
They stop solving problems.
And that’s when the real rot sets in.
Velocity Is Not Progress#
You can burn down 30 points a week and still be going backwards.
That clever workaround? Now a landmine.
That tech debt? Still accruing interest.
That design decision? Never re-evaluated.
Ticket-Driven Development optimizes for movement, not momentum. It mistakes activity for effectiveness. It gets things done—but not necessarily the right things, or in a way that can survive the next product pivot.
And when things inevitably break?
More tickets.
Spotting a Team Trapped in Ticket Mode#
You’ll know the signs:
Nobody knows why you’re building what you’re building — just that it’s due Friday.
PRs are “green” but never discussed.
Tech debt tasks go untouched until a fire breaks out.
Every improvement needs a separate ticket, separate estimate, separate approval.
Engineers treat code like it belongs to someone else; Which, functionally, it does.
The most damning sign?
Nobody’s proud of the code anymore. It’s just a job.
Pushing Back Without Burning Down the Board#
You don’t need a process revolution to fix this. You need permission to care again.
Here’s what that looks like:
Leave the code a little better than you found it — even if no one asked you to.
Pair up occasionally, not because it’s mandated, but because it helps.
Ask why. Even if you already know the answer. Especially then.
Write the extra comment. Rename the method. Delete the dead file.
Treat the ticket as a boundary, not a blindfold.
Because the real job isn’t closing tickets it’s building systems that work.
The Work That’s Worth Doing#
When I work with teams, I’m not adding frameworks, ceremonies, or new ways to track the same pain. I help strip away the noise so developers can actually think again.
We reconnect teams with flow, autonomy, and the pride of shipping work that matters. Not just work that moves.
Because in the end, delivery is not about going faster. It’s about going somewhere on purpose.