The increasing introduction to agile in various fields and organizations is proving its competencies. Agile has worked on various aspects of organization management. It has reduced time to market, skipped unnecessary processes, changed the employee mindset for the better, etc. Having a switch to agile is not enough to get its full benefit, for that agile metric is needed. As every process and system needs a complete thought to have the most benefit similarly agile also has agile metrics for its evaluation and maintaining the standards.
Agile metrics help in evaluating and monitoring the stages of agile software development. In lean agile development alone single thing doesn’t assure the success of the system or organization but a combination is required. With agile metrics, agile lean development ensures the quality product to the customer within time.
“Without a standard, there is no logical basis for decision making or taking actions.”
In this article, we will learn about agile metrics and how they are important for agile-lean development.
What is Agile Metrics?
Metrics is a measure to check whether we need to make changes in our ongoing process or should it keep going as it's good. The main point in measuring metrics is to know what to measure. In agile teams, these agile metrics are used as a standard to know the effectiveness of a team. This metric is a good tool that can be used in adaptation, inspection, and planning to measure standards. For development companies, agile metrics help in measuring software quality. Agile metrics keep the team’s performance in check regularly, exposing the loopholes in the initial stages.
The basic three measurement domains for effective agile metrics are
Outcome
Flow
Competency
This can be applied to all levels of an organization.
Outcome Measurement
These agile metrics help in understanding whether the efforts added have derived the required benefits from it. It includes both the external and internal outcomes. In basic, the outcomes are measured with KPI (Key performance indicator). This measure like KPI mainly depends on the business model, organization, and nature of solutions delivered. Different KPIs can apply to different portfolios and solutions delivered. Other than KPIs, PI objectives and iteration goals are other metrics used to ensure the focus on the need of customers and business outcomes.
Measuring Flow
It measures the efficiency of the organization. This agile metric provides six metrics for better measurement of flow in the organization.
Distribution- It helps in measuring the amount of work done within the time. This may include defects, features, risks, and also enablers. It helps in balancing the current and future velocity.
Time- It measures the efficiency of the agile system. It is measured from start to end of the process i.e. delivery of the product. It ensures the organization and agile teams focus on the important things of the projects.
Velocity- It helps in measuring the backlog items in the provided time box. It helps in measuring the process improvement and ensures the time stability of the system.
Efficiency-In agile metrics efficiency flow measures the time spent on value-added activities. This gives us an idea about the extra time spent in between the steps and avoiding them. It helps in surfacing the bottleneck and bubbles and waste in the system.
Predictability-This agile metric measures the agile team's efficiency in performing their objectives. This helps in measuring the average performance of teams, ARTs, and solution trains to plan and complete PI objectives. This ensures our understanding of the predictability we make about delivery commitments and also surfaces the underlying issues of technology, planning, and organizational performance.
Load- It is used to measure the number of items in the system. As the balanced load will have consistency and quality in the work delivered.
Measuring Competency
To achieve business agility every organization needs certain expertise in core competencies. Every competency is interdependent to achieve complete agility and also independent to present certain value to the business. To measure competency there is two assessment design for completely two different purpose and people.
Business agility is designed to measure business and portfolio stakeholders’ competency to achieve true and larger business agility and goals.
In agile metrics, core competency assessments are designed for agile teams and train them to improve business and technical practices in teams so that they can improve their portfolio and help achieve higher goals.
Even though there are various agile metrics shown by various individuals in agile, it is necessary to follow the limited metrics which are required.
So select the agile metrics wisely for your agile organization and projects.
About Advance Agility
We, at Advance Agility, are the new-age Agile Coaching, Consulting and IT services company. We enable end-to-end Digital Transformation. Agile execution is integral to our being. We are doing SAFe implementation with small, medium and large organization across the globe. Our vision is to be the leading Agile execution player globally. To keep adding value at every process stage. We are on a mission to empower our clients, move from concept to cash in the shortest sustainable lead time by adopting human centric approach to business agility. Embracing the change is in our DNA. Things that keep us apart are Quicker and Seamless execution with End-to-end gamut of services. Our Global presence and Stellar Track Record give us an edge over our competitor.
Connect with us at advanceagility.com to learn about SAFe and SAFe Implementation. Write to us at contact@advanceagilty.com for any agile training or consulting needs. We are always looking for competent agile trainers as well. So if you are a good trainer or want to become one, do get in touch with us to that we can learn, grow and achieve together.
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