Measuring What Matters in Your Agile Transformation

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agile42 | The Agile Coaching Company
Measuring What Matters "
in your Agile Transformation

Brad Swanson
Enterprise Agile Coach
@agile42
brad.swanson@agile42.com
@bradswanson

Goal
PSF
NC
Agile Strategy
Map™
Define the Goal we want to
achieve
Possible Success Factor (PSF)
represents a hypothesis about a
key factor that would enable us
to achieve the Goal
Necessary Condition (NC):
what is needed in order to fulfill
the Success Factor
http://www.agile42.com/en/agile-transition/agile-strategy-map/
Agile Strategy Map™ - Framework for Strategy

Goal
CSF#1
NC#1.1
NC#1.2
Agile Strategy
Map™
CSF#1: we must consolidate all
projects in one Portfolio, so that
will be able to make better
business decisions
NC#1.1.1
The Pilot was successful...
The Potential Success Factor
becomes a Critical Success
Factor (CSF). Update the strategy
to roll out and institutionalize the
change.
Pilot success! Now what?

Sustainably faster
delivery of
solutions that
delight
customers
Faster time
to market
Alignment & support
across the org
Engaged & joyful
people
Transparent
empirical view
of org
performance
Grow and sustain
agile practices
Culture of
continuous
learning &
improvement
Org priorities
aligned with
Customer value
Agile Transformation"
Sample Goal + Success Factors (PSFs / CSFs)

Sustainably faster
delivery of solutions that
delight customers
Faster time to
market
Balance workload &
capacity: limit WIP
Alignment &
support across
the org
Engaged & joyful
people
Transparent
empirical view of org
performance
Grow and
sustain agile
practices
Culture of
continuous learning
& improvement
Org priorities
aligned with
customer value
Dedicated "
Guiding Coaltion
Pilot projects
Clearly
communicated
vision & strategy
Training & coaching
Build "
internal "
expertise
Collaborative
prioritization
with stakeholders
Collaborative "
cross-functional "
teams
Automated
testing &
deployment
Incremental
delivery
Visible metrics
Leaders to
remove fear
Empowerment
Clear, "
realistic goals
Servant
leadership
Action taken
to improve
Foster
innovation
Celebrate
failed "
experiments
Sample Agile Strategy Map™
Clear
career path
Goal
Success factors
Necessary conditions
Legend:

A few metrics (KPIs) for the goal
Sustainably faster delivery of solutions that delight customers
These are lagging indicators; some leading indicators are described soon…

Leading & lagging indicators for each PSF / CSF
PSF
Leading Indicators
Lagging Indicators
•  # total concurrent projects
•  Avg # concurrent projects/
person
•  Program burn-up chart
•  Lead time: idea to 1st delivery
•  Cycle time: Dev start to 1st delivery
•  Deployment frequency post 1st
delivery (MVP/V1)

•  Frequency & effectiveness of
stakeholder collaboration on
prioritization
•  Standard way to compare
project value
•  Portfolio priorities highly visible
•  All teams working on top portfolio
priorities; no ‘side projects’
•  Delivered value is measured and
meets expectations
•  Customer satisfaction survey
•  Sales and/or usage statistics
1.  Faster
time to
market
2. Org
priorities
aligned
with
customer
value

CSF 1: Time to Market
Lead time: from request to 1st deploy
Cycle time: dev start to 1st deploy

CSF 1: Time to Market – leading indicator

CSF 1: Time to Market / predictability – lagging
indicator
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
14
16
18
20
2
4
6
8
10
12
14
16
18
20
22
24
26
28
30
32
34
36
38
40
Lead time frequency
Lead time (days)
Frequency

PSF 2: Org priorities aligned with customer value –"
leading indicators
Churn =
% change after
commit point

Compare
actuals
with
forecast
PSF 2: Org priorities aligned with customer value –"
lagging indicators

Leading & lagging indicators for each PSF
PSF
Leading Indicators
Lagging Indicators
•  Sr. Leadership consensus on
strategy
•  Frequency of comms on vision &
strategy; # of different forums
•  Short-term wins visibly
celebrated
•  # hours spent on Guiding
Coalition activities
•  Poll: % who agree with strategy
•  Poll: % prefer new to old approach
•  # of teams asking to ‘go agile’

•  # people trained on Agile
•  # people in coached projects
•  # people in the ‘coach the
coach’ program
•  Agile team practices maturity level
•  # people completing ‘coach the
coach’
•  # people achieving 3rd party Agile
certiﬁcations
•  Monthly attendance in Agile
Community of Practice (CoP) mtgs
4.
Grow &
sustain
agile
practices
3.
Alignment
& support
across the
org

PSF 3: Alignment & support

PSF 4: Grow & sustain agile practices

Your turn to try…
• Select a success
factor (from the
sample or your own)
• Identify a few leading
and lagging
indicators
• How could you
measure and
visualize them?

Leading & lagging indicators for each PSF
*Success ratio over 70% may indicate fear of failure
PSF
Leading Indicators
Lagging Indicators
•  Poll: things getting better or
worse?
•  Career path deﬁned for all roles
•  Poll: employee job satisfaction
•  Attrition rate
•  # employee referrals for hiring

•  Avg frequency of team
retrospectives
•  # of experimental learnings
celebrated (fast safe failures)
•  Poll: Do you feel safe to
experiment & innovate?
•  # team-initiated process changes
•  # team-initiated product
innovations
•  Success ratio of experiments*

5.
Engaged
& joyful
people
6. Culture
of
continuous
learning &
Improve-
ment

Attack of the
Killer Metrics!"
"
When metrics
go bad…

Questions to ask about every metric
1.  What decisions will be made based on this metric?
2.  Is this the RIGHT thing to measure or an easy-to-measure
proxy?
3.  What might be the unintended consequences of this
metric?
4.  How could this metric be ‘gamed’?
5.  What can we do to guard against unintended
consequences and ‘gaming’?
6.  Is this a ‘management’ metric or a ‘team’ metric?

Compensating / Balancing Metrics
• What unintended consequences might happen if you
measure speed of delivery?
• What is a compensating metric to counteract it?
• Measure speed AND quality!

Management vs. Team Metrics
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/
https://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/joeshlabotnik/ https://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/jeroen020/

Your turn: Revisit your indicators from 1st activity…
1.  What decisions will be made based on this metric?
2.  Is this the RIGHT thing to measure or an easy-to-measure
proxy?
3.  What might be the unintended consequences of this
metric?
4.  How could this metric be ‘gamed’?
5.  What can we do to guard against unintended
consequences and ‘gaming’?
6.  Is this a ‘management’ metric or a ‘team’ metric?

Thank you!
Brad Swanson
Senior Agile Coach
@agile42
brad.swanson@agile42.com
@bradswanson

Measuring What Matters in Your Agile Transformation

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