Demonstrating Agile’s benefits to your organization is key to driving progress on an Agile transformation. It inspires people to get on board, opening their minds and making them more receptive to change – which is important for those who are new to Agile.
How can leaders overcome challenges to establish meaningful measures of Agile’s impact on their businesses? Here are four best practices.
1. Focus on three categories
Delivery performance
The organization should look for improved productivity fueled by faster velocity, higher quality and less rework.
Business results
An important goal of Agile is faster value delivery. Business results metrics are usually of most importance to managers and other leaders but should be tied to delivery performance measurements to help teams connect their work to the bigger picture.
Team and organizational health
Agile approaches can induce positive cultural change by prioritizing people, teams and collaboration. People should become more engaged, be comfortable in their roles and feel valued. As Agile permeates the company, those cultural changes should as well.
2. Identify the metrics that matter
Many companies think their goals are clear because they’re documented in a mission statement and communicated across the organization. Mission-statement-level goals, however, are lofty and often difficult to measure. What do the people at each level really value? What do they view as efficiency, effectiveness and mastery? Identify their goals and the questions you need to answer to know you’re moving toward them to drive out the metrics that matter for them.
3. Align metrics across organizational levels
Establish alignment between the metrics at each organizational level so teams can see how they’re contributing to the strategic business goals and the C-suite has visibility into progress and outcomes through a cumulative (and common) view.
4. Measure before, during and after transformation
Measuring before the transformation is about establishing baselines. Measuring during transformation keeps delivery work on track and provides visibility to inform potential changes in direction. And measuring “post-transformation” is key to knowing whether your organization has not only reached a more optimized state but whether it is staying there. It also provides a view of how teams and the organization can continuously improve.
In the end, in an Agile transformation, the old adage applies: You can’t manage what you can’t measure. These four best practices will help you put metrics that matter in place to measure Agile’s benefits and accelerate adoption.
Read the full article from Peter Karlson here on Forbes CommunityVoice.