Agile Measurement & Metrics

Ritesh Chopade
Nov 3, 2019
2 min read

Updated: Dec 30, 2019

In agile ways of working strong emphasis is on continuous leaning & improvements. In order to do that it’s very important to have baseline of current state. We need to understand where we are right now and then you can plan where we want to reach on improvement road map.

You can’t improve unless you know what to measure & how to measure :)

In professional world, irrespective of which methodology (Waterfall / Agile) you are working in; project metrics & reporting are very common way of measuring team's performance in project. However it is important to understand what is the significance behind measurement.

Why are we measuring?
What are we measuring?
How are we measuring?
How these metrics will help us driving improvements?

Why to Measure?

You can’t improve unless you know what to measure & how to measure :)

· To Inspect and Adapt

· To take Effective & Efficient improvement actions

· To drive continuous leaning & improvements.

· Measurement should be Transparent, Honest, Unbiased.

How to Measure?

How we drive this initiative in team? How are we measuring our team progress? Are we creating an open & transparent environment within team to insect and Adapt?

There are many ways to drive this; but most effective way is through Retrospectives. In retrospective, entire team participate and do Inspect & Adapt. Then commit themselves for improvement action items. There are some logical stages to make retrospective meeting effective & efficient as mentioned below,

1. Set Stage / Context

2. Gather Data

3. Generate Insights from Data

4. Draw Decisions

5. Closure

Its recommended that SM should capture Sprint related data from Jira & create agile metrics dashboard (in pdf / ppt format) at the end of each sprint. They share & discuss this dashboard with team in retrospective meeting. They generate insights from those metrics in order to evaluate team’s performance, foresee risks and assess team productivity and then draw improvement actions required.

Agile Metrics - Sample Dashboard

Sharing some sample metrics for dashboard template that should help you to start with your own dashboard for your team. Every team can decide on their own set of metrics depending upon why, what & how their want to measure.