8 Powerful Agile Metrics You Should Know

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Agile metrics are a standard metric in Agile methodology. Evaluating the work progress is essential for improving the success rate of projects by tweaking the project management approach to align with Agile principles. It helps monitor the work progress across various project development life cycle phases.

However, Agile alone may not always assist a firm in delivering excellent work on schedule. Your goals, company, and development team will determine the metrics you select. Scrum teams, for example, often measure burndown and velocity, whereas Kanban teams typically track cycle time, throughput, and work in progress (WIP).

8 Powerful Agile Metrics

The list:

• Sprint Burndown Report
• Agile Velocity
• Control Chart
• Cumulative Flow Diagram
• Lead Time And Cycle Time
• Throughputs
• Work Item Age
• Value Delivered

Sprint Burndown Report

Sprint burndown report is one of the famous quantitative agile metrics. The sprint burndown report presents a chart depicting the story points completed and how many are left during the current work period, typically a sprint, and helps forecast if the targeted result will happen on time.

The sprint burndown report provides a clear picture of the rate and quantity of progress accomplished at any point throughout the sprint. The team predicts the workload at the beginning of a sprint and aims to complete it by the end of the sprint.

The sprint burndown report’s two key measuring elements are time and work remaining to finish. The X-axis symbolizes time, while the Y-axis represents remaining labor. Hours or tale points are the units of measurement.

The red line represents the rate at which your team must execute assignments. The blue line depicts the number of employment created. The yellow line represents your ‘projected’ project progress.

Agile Velocity

Agile velocity is a key agile metrics that measures the team’s average work during the current work period and helps forecast. There are multiple iterations in Agile Velocity. The number of iterations determines the forecast’s accuracy. The more repetitions there are, the more exact the forecast becomes.

It is possible to predict how quickly a team can work through the backlog using velocity because the report is based on forecasts and completed work.

To assess the velocity of a sprint, you must first determine how many user stories the team must finish. You must also know how many points a user narrative is worth. The final step is summing up the points for the number of finished stories.

For example, your team has completed four user stories, and each story equals three story points. During sprint two, your team engaged ten stories, and each story equals four story points. Your team completes seven stories, equalling twenty-one story points.

With the individual sprint velocities, you can average them together.

Average sprint velocity = (12+28)/2 = 20

Agile velocity allows the new team to accustom to the workflow and helps existing teams to ensure consistent improvement over time. A decrease in velocity reflects the inefficiency of the team’s development process and the need for the next retrospective.

Control Chart

In agile metrics, control charts primarily focus on the time taken from “in process” to “complete” status of tasks. The throughput of teams that have shorter cycle times is expected to be higher, and the deliverability of teams that have consistent cycle times across many issues is more predictable. 

A team’s processes can improve efficiently and effectively by measuring cycle time because the result of a change is immediately apparent, allowing for immediate adjustments.

By using the control chart, it is possible to measure the success or failure of different processes within the project, and to detect defects within the process.

In the end, the goal should be to maintain a short and consistent cycle time, regardless of the nature of the work.

Cumulative Flow Diagram

The cumulative flow diagram is one of the best agile tools to measure agile metrics like lead time and cycle time, throughput, and work in progress.

As a rule of thumb, the cumulative flow diagram looks smooth from left to right. Bubbles and gaps in any color on a chart indicate shortages and bottlenecks, so you should try smoothing out the color bands when you see them.

The cumulative flow diagram (CFD) assures consistency in workflow across the team. Time is on the X-axis, and the number of issues is on the Y-axis. As the band narrows, the entry rate is higher than the throughput rate. If the band widens, your workflow capacity is more significant than necessary, and the team can move labor elsewhere to smoothen the flow.

The CFD provides a clear visual representation of blockages. The team can analyze how jams formed in the first place. After that, the team can make improvements by eliminating those blocks.

Lead Time And Cycle Time

Lead and cycle time are two fundamental Agile metrics that have their roots in the field of lean management. Both illustrate how long work items spend in a particular procedure. However, there is an obvious distinction between them.

Lead time represents the overall amount of time, including wait time, that a work item spends in the process, from when it is requested to when it is delivered.

Cycle time accumulates in Agile metrics when you begin working on the requested item. Cycle time, instead of lead time, is what one might consider as the “team timeline.” In other words, you can use the cycle time to calculate how many hours or days someone actively worked on a task to finish it. This allows you to track the time of all work items in a project and use it as input to build improved project completion projections.

If a customer asks that a feature must be developed, and if you haven’t begun working on the part yet, lead time begins to accumulate the moment you commit to providing it. Cycle time, on the other hand, starts when you begin working on it.

Throughputs

In Agile metrics, throughput measures the average number of work items processed per unit of time. It provides the details of a team’s actual capacity, so the management can plan better on how much work can be delivered in a given period of time. 

Throughput run chat measures the weekly throughput of the team. The throughput run chart visualizes how many work items a team can complete, analyzes average throughput, and helps in planning future activities.

Work Item Age

Work item age represents the amount of time that elapses between starting and finishing the current job. The work item age is used to determine the timetable for undone projects.

Using this measure, the team can see how current tasks are progressing. In addition, the team may compare earlier performance in the same context as the current circumstance. The aging work-in-progress chart serves as the measurement tool in this scenario.

Value Delivered

Under the value delivered metric, project managers assign a value to each requirement, and this agile metric uses either a monetary or a point system, so the implementation of high-value features is the priority. 

A rising trend in this measure indicates that everything is on track and a negative trend shows the opposite. It demonstrates that you are implementing lower-value features. If this is the case, the team needs to make corrections. 

Related Reads:

• Scrum Project Management – What You Should Know in 2022
• The 3 Essential Scrum Artifacts You Must Know in 2022
• 7 Best Agile Project Management Tools

Bottom Line

Metrics are only one aspect of developing a team’s culture. They provide quantifiable insight into the team’s performance and measurable team objectives. While they are vital, it’s best to not view them as a bottom line.

Listening to the team’s comments during retrospectives is equally critical in increasing team trust, product quality, and development pace through the release process. To motivate improvement, you must provide both quantitative and qualitative feedback.

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Simon Calder

Chris “Simon” Calder was working as a Project Manager in IT for one of Los Angeles’ most prestigious cultural institutions, LACMA.He taught himself to use Microsoft Project from a giant textbook and hated every moment of it. Online learning was in its infancy then, but he spotted an opportunity and made an online MS Project course - the rest, as they say, is history!