In a recent webinar hosted by 2Checkout and moderated by 2Checkout Program Manager, Cristina Lupu, Agile expert Mihai Olaru, program manager at PM Access and Agile trainer and coach, covered some of the most critical performance indicators to track when measuring the success of your Agile team.
“Approaching the Agile pathway with the right Agile mindset is only part of the deal,” Mihai emphasized. “The other part is making your business or organization understand the benefits and how to measure success. How do we know our Agile team is doing the right thing?”
The primary principle of the Agile Manifesto, he pointed out, is measuring “great” by the working result, whether your product is software or another technology or service, but “without data you just have an opinion.”
What data and other indicators should companies be measuring to see if their Agile team is really “great”? Mihai recommended six main areas to examine.
1. Value, or return on investment
“Innovating things is very engaging, but we’re not just in this for the fun of it—the ultimate goal is value; we deliver value to shareholders, customers, and even fellow team members.” Mihai outlined some ways to measure value:
- Delivering value incrementally; conducting occasional testing to receive feedback from customers.
- Running split tests (A/B tests), which work particularly well with projects like conversion rate optimization scenarios.
- Segmenting your markets to test new features.
- Taking the Lean startup approach: “The fundamental activity of a startup is to turn ideas into products, measure how customers respond, and then learn whether to pivot or persevere.”
2. Speed of the team at turning requirements into deliverables
The two most common uses of metrics, Mihai pointed out, are velocity (used with Scrum), and cycle time (used with Kanban). There are benefits and drawbacks to both, he emphasized.
- Velocity: The number of story points or complexity points completed by a team during a sprint; the team will measure the success and see whether the trend of completion is getting better, worse, and what any large variations are. Drawbacks of this approach include the possibility that teams will inflate the value of story points, knowing increased velocity is the goal; furthermore, if the velocity growth is unstable, with lots of ups and downs, it isn’t reliable to predict the future.
- Cycle Time: Measures the workflow comparing start date and end date of work items, finding a mean measure for all work items. This measurement can be misleading, however, if work items are not similar in size and effort.
3. Collaboration
“The Agile mindset is that individuals and interactions are more important than processes and tools,” Mihai explains, and he recommends conducting 360-degree periodic reviews of your team members. Reviews of various aspects including attitude, trust and respect, conflict resolution, etc. can help you improve team collaboration.
4. Scope done – What Remains
This form of measurement involves looking at what’s ahead and what remains to be done, Mihai says, and Agile uses three of the following tools:
- Burn up chart, a stacking graph of what’s been completed of the total scope. The advantage of using this tool is that you can predict when the work will be completed and you can add or subtract to the total scope as you move along.
- Burn down chart, which Mihai points out is difficult to do manually and thus needs automation, is a chart that shows what’s remaining of the total work at any specific point in time. This kind of tool can not only help you predict when you will finish the work but also helps you focus on what’s left.
- Cumulative flow diagram, which shows what’s done, what’s remaining, AND a detailed WIP at each point in time. This tool allows the measurement of flow KPI’s, their cycle time, and lead time throughout.
5. Team Maturity
You get a composite of knowledge, skills, and new ideas from your team members, Mihai asserts. How do you measure the overall value of those features when they are working as a team? Mihai outlines some of the features to examine, including:
- How eager are they learn/innovate?
- How self-organized are they?
- Are they cross functional?
- Do they develop new skills?
- Do they handle their own problems?
6. Quality
“The last on the list but the most important,” says Mihai. You can measure quality through the following items:
- Customer satisfaction; ask them to rate their satisfaction from using your product on a linear scale, 1-5 or 1-10, for example, or with a Customer Effort Score (CES), asking them to rate how easy it was to use your product, or a Net Promoter Score (NPS), asking how likely they are to recommend your product to others.
- Build quality practices: Tools/Practices that “build quality in” rather than “test quality out.”
- Number and severity distribution of escaped effects; or number of bugs identified by customers as well as bug severity distribution.
Watch the entire How Do You Measure Great within Your Agile Team webinar with Mihai Olaru and learn more about how to measure results in your Agile team.
