The first agile principle says “Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software”. To make this happen, agile teams need to measure their progress towards delivering business value. How do teams measure their progress towards delivering valuable software to customers? We will go over the standard metrics every agile team should monitor.
Agile metrics should be treated not only as a performance measuring tool, but also as an overall communications strategy. The following are some of the goals agile metrics seek to communicate:
- To assess the development teams progress toward planned milestones.
- Help forsee potential risks, which allows the team to mitigate problems before they become severe.
- Measure the delivery of project value.
- Assess team productivity.
- To monitor and measure quality.
We will explain 5 common metrics agile teams use:
Burndown Charts
A burndown chart is a graph that shows the amount of work remaining on a project. These charts display completed work in a downward trend. As work is completed, the progress line moves down:
On this chart, the red line shows the amount of work the team plans to complete for a 2-week sprint or 10 working days, which is 50 story points. The blue represents the actual work completed. Looking at this example, the team was behind their forecast up to day 5 because the actual work completed line is above the estimated line. However, after day 5, the team started to catch up and now it appears they will meet their sprint goal.
Burnup Charts
Burnup charts show the amount of work that has been completed on a project. These charts show completed work in an upward trend, showing the increasing amount of work completed. Burnup charts also show total scope and scope changes. The burnup chart below represents a release with 10 sprints:
On this chart, the red line shows completed scope. The green line represents a projected forecast based on the teams average velocity. The purple line represents the scope in story points. Notice how the scope increased at the 4th and 6th sprint. Based on the teams average velocity, it appears they will not meet their release goal as the projected line is below the total scope by the end of the sprint. This is an early warning sign for the team may be at risk of meeting their commitment.
Velocity
Velocity is a measurement of completed story points per sprint. This is an important metric that helps the team plan for future iterations and releases.
A teams velocity will vary for the first 3-4 sprints and should start to stabilize by the 5th one. Velocity is a really useful planning tool used to forecast future work. In the example above, the team should be able to confidently predict they can complete around 48 story points for upcoming sprints. Now, this assumes the team stays the same and there are no vacations planned.
Defect Reports
Agile teams should always try to test early and often to catch defects sooner rather than later because defects are costlier to fix the later they are found.
To improve their quality, agile teams should track their defect rate. An increasing defect rate is an indicator to ask why the process is getting worse and is a signal to take action.
Risk Burndown Charts
Agile teams should identify risks early in the project. Some level of risk planning is necessary prior to starting a project. Risk is also an important consideration in prioritizing the product backlog. Agile processes promote taking in higher risk features and stories early in the project.
A risk burndown chart shows the reduction in risk as the project progresses.
Conclusion
Agile metrics should be related to project success. There are different stakeholders for metrics and their needs may vary. Doing metrics for the sake of doing metrics is not a good approach. Choose metrics for your team that provide value.
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