To your own point, the reports serve little value aside from a fabricated narrative that some companies like to build feel-goods around.
Discuss the complexities and needs. Break the work into small chunks. Define what progress means. Set expectations for making progress. Regularly and honestly review why you/the team are or aren’t meeting expectations. Rinse and repeat.
Perhaps this is over simplifying it, but these are the tried-and-true high notes in my experience. If at any point one of those steps isn’t feasible, then it’s a larger issue that implementation process likely isn’t going to solve, so the “to measure velocity or not” point seems moot.
Discuss the complexities and needs. Break the work into small chunks. Define what progress means. Set expectations for making progress. Regularly and honestly review why you/the team are or aren’t meeting expectations. Rinse and repeat.
Perhaps this is over simplifying it, but these are the tried-and-true high notes in my experience. If at any point one of those steps isn’t feasible, then it’s a larger issue that implementation process likely isn’t going to solve, so the “to measure velocity or not” point seems moot.