Getting Fit(ness Criteria)

Getting
Fit(ness Criteria)
@mattphilip London Lean Kanban Days 2016

Fitness is always defined
externally. It is customers and
other stakeholders such as
governments or regulatory
authorities that define what
fitness means.
-- David J. Anderson
(emphasis added)
What is Fitness?

@mattphilip #LLKD16
delivery
team
customer
exec sponsor
Risk factors,
Success criteria
TDD, code coverage,
JS framework,
team happiness
Fitness Criteria
coach
WIP

@mattphilip #LLKD16
delivery
team
customer
Exec sponsor
Quality
Delivery time
Predictability
coach

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business
CIO
PMO able to track progress,
No teams falling behind
“Doing Agile,”
Estimating well
Fitness Criteria
delivery
team
delivery
team
delivery
team

@mattphilip #LLKD16
business
CIO
Value delivery,
Reliability
delivery
team
delivery
team
delivery
team

Asking your customers what they value about your
service or product
Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
Agile Manifesto

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Fitness criteria are a key to self-organizing teams

@mattphilip #LLKD16
Fitness Criteria Metric Health/Improvement Metric
Metric that enables us to evaluate
whether our product, service or service
delivery is "fit for purpose" in the eyes of
a customer from a given market
segment. Effectively comprise the Key
Performance Indicators (KPIs) foreach
market segment.
Metric that guides an improvement
initiative or indicates the general health
of your business, business or product
unit or service delivery capability.
Direct Indirect/derivative
Examples: delivery time, functional
quality, safety
Examples: flow efficiency, velocity,
percent complete and accurate, WIP
Customer-oriented/derived Team-oriented/derived

If it’s not at least derivative of a fitness
criterion, it’s at best a vanity metric,
and at worst a misguiding metric.

@mattphilip #LLKD16
We help software-delivery
organizations and teams
become fit for their
purpose.

@mattphilip #LLKD16
Tips for establishing fitness criteria
Who, When and How

Net Fitness Score
Delivery Quality
“Did you get what you wanted?”
Net Fitness Score (NFS) =
% satisfied customers –
% dissatisfied customers
Question 1: How "fit for purpose" did you find this delivery?
• 5. Extremely: I got everything I needed and more
• 4. Highly: I got everything I needed
• 3. Mostly: I got most of what I needed but some of
my needs were not met
• 2. Partially: Some of my purpose was met but
significant and important elements were missing
• 1. Slightly: I took some value from it but most of
what I was looking for was missing
• 0. Not at all: I got nothing useful
Question 2: Specifically, why did you give that rating?

Delivery-Time
Expectation
Delivery Speed and Predictability
Expressed as number of days we
might reasonably expect any work
item to be completed in, based on
confidence interval
• Delivery Time Expectations
(85th, 50th percentiles)
• End-to-end duration from
commitment to delivery

If your customer doesn't recognize or care about
your KPIs, then they aren't "key" or "performance"
indicators and aren't predictors of how well your
business is performing or likely to perform in future.
-- David Anderson

@mattphilip #LLKD16
• Have a conversation with your customer
• Discover fitness criteria
• Ask “What decisions would these affect?”
• Make them visible
• Use in feedback loop (e.g., service-delivery review)
Takeaways for
Tomorrow

• Service-Delivery Review Canvas (mattphilip.wordpress.com)
• Defining Fitness for Purpose (http://www.djaa.com/defining-fitness-purpose)
• Your KPIs Probably Aren't! But What Are They?
(https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/your-kpis-probably-arent-what-david-anderson)
References and Further Reading
@mattphilip

Getting Fit(ness Criteria)

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