Metrics and measures are always on the agenda when Polaris works with organizations new to Agile. We introduce a new, future-proof way for them to get work completed, so it makes sense that the old means of measuring don\u2019t necessarily apply anymore. If you\u2019re looking for modern ways to measure everything about your organization\u2013from key business outcomes to internal processes\u2013here\u2019s a breakdown of some techniques we turn to.<\/p>\n
An easy mistake for organizations to make when it comes to measurement is glossing over the first step: setting goals. many take a traditional, top-down approach to organizational goals, but taking time in the beginning to collectively question your desired outcomes\u2013to ask what you want to achieve and why\u2013can be powerful. That\u2019s all because with business analytics you get what you measure.<\/p>\n
If you think your goal is to get more stuff out the door, then velocity can be a great measure. How many user stories did the team get through, and how quickly were they delivered? These metrics, however, can be extremely easy to abuse and manipulate. Anytime you\u2019re measuring velocity, you should consider something to counteract that measure, like quality. Introducing a countermeasure ensures you\u2019re not pushing the team to deliver too much, and also ensures you\u2019re not pushing for gold-plated code at the expense of quantity delivered.<\/p>\n
What value is there in getting features out the door if they aren\u2019t the right features? How do you identify the right ones? Luckily, there are a lot of tools available for determining value, or relative value, and ensuring you\u2019re building the right things. Weighted Shortest Job First<\/a> (WSJF) is a popular prioritization technique born out of the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe\u00ae). It can help you quickly decide if you\u2019re focusing on the right things, but it can also be challenging for teams just starting out. Affinity estimation is another good technique for finding relative value to determine what you should be working on.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s assume that, between WSJF\/affinity estimation, velocity, and quality, you now have the means to (1) know what to build and (2) determine whether you\u2019re developing it on a predictable cadence. Now, you can move onto measurement designed to address second level problems. The first of these is to examine whether you are delivering optimally. In most cases, the metrics organizations are already tracking don\u2019t surface this information.<\/p>\n There are a few new things you can keep an eye on in order to better understand your system. As your organization matures or scales, you can measure your system by measuring flow efficiency. While this is a Kanban concept<\/a>, that doesn\u2019t mean it\u2019s not applicable outside of Kanban systems. To get to flow efficiency, you\u2019ll need to track two new metrics:<\/p>\n Lead time is the time from the customer request to the time it\u2019s delivered. Think of this as the time from when you order a pizza to when it shows up on your doorstep. Overall work time is measured by the time working in any state. Taking the pizza analogy further, this would be from the time the store starts making your pizza until it is ready to deliver. If it takes 30 minutes from order to door, and 10 from start of making to ready to deliver, then the flow efficiency of that system is 10\/30 = or 33% efficiency.<\/p>\n By measuring flow efficiency, you can start looking at your process to determine if there are any bottlenecks or opportunities to streamline and improve. This will allow you to increase the amount you\u2019re delivering, and with the other metrics you\u2019ve already been capturing you can ensure that it\u2019s all high quality. Starting with these metrics should get you through your first year of Agile development.<\/p>\nDon\u2019t Forget Flow Efficiency<\/h2>\n
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