Monthly Archives: January 2018

The Sirens Song of Measurement

Like the Siren song that caused sailors wreck their ships on the rocks, the call to measure agile team velocity calls to managers and executives.

Scrum teams often track their velocity, an average of the total story points delivered in past sprints. As teams improve, velocity typically increases. And, mature teams typically don’t have erratic velocities.

Management believes that if a stable, predictable velocity with an upward trend over time is good, we should set a target and boundaries for what “good” velocity is. Track it, and make a dashboard of it.

But here’s the problem: if you start showing team velocities, side-by-side, and coloring them as red/yellow/green, there is no longer emotional safety. Any scrum team with half a brain will figure out how to make that status report look good. And, that often creates artificial, useless, harmful, behaviors.

But, here’s the rub. In the absence of other information, management wants to measure SOMETHING!

Forget about measuring and comparing velocities at a leadership level, and find ways to determine, and measure:
1. How will we Know if we built the right thing?
2. How will we Know if we built it right?

Measure those things, and forget about holding teams to a particular velocity expectation.

What do you think? Do you have ways to measure delivering the right thing, or whether it was built right? Please share.

 

Photo and Model Credits
Model/Editor/Stylist/MUA: Ghost Siren
Photographer: Elizabeth Stemmler
Photographer Elizabeth Stemmler on Facebook
Original Image Source

Measure Agile Teams at Your Own Risk

Agile methods, when done well, will increase the ability of an organization to deliver value to its customers. Teams deliver frequently. Teams move faster.

In Scrum, the total story points delivered every sprint is the team’s velocity. Increasing velocity is good. Decreasing velocity is bad. That’s the conventional wisdom.

Because we want increasing speed, it’s seductive to make a trend of the team’s velocity. Velocity is easy to measure. Because we measure every sprint, it is easy to make a trend.

Predictability is valuable, so organizations start to set boundaries for what “good” variation looks like, and what “bad” variation looks like. Good variation is modest and generally increasing. Bad variation is erratic and hard to use for predictions.

Because we know what is “good” and what is “bad,” it is easy to set targets for these metrics.  But, guess what? When targets get set, and teams get measured against those targets. Who wants to look bad? Nobody. Team members are smart enough to make themselves look good. And there is the problem.

A team that is evaluated against a target will do whatever is needed to achieve that metric. The easiest thing to do is modify behavior to artificially make the data look good. The metrics will get “gamed.”

Measuring, in and of itself, is not bad. Measuring teams, setting targets, evaluating teams, and comparing teams to one another; that’s bad.

If I had to sum this up in one line, it is this:
If you set a target, the teams might hit the bullseye, but might be bullshit.

Do you have a story of metrics that turned into targets that created unintended consequences? Please comment below.

Do you believe you’ve been around targets that didn’t create unintended consequences? I’d be interested in those, too.

Kanban – More than Columns on a Wall

If you’ve slapped up a board that says “to do,” “doing,” and “done” and called it Kanban, that’s about the weakest implementation of Kanban that is possible.

If you’re interested in really harnessing the Kanban framework, you have to go beyond three columns and:

  1. Model your team’s actual workflow
  2. Apply discipline to your policies, work-in-progress (WIP) limits
  3. Measure
  4. Get nerdy with the data

If you want to learn more about using data with Kanban, go get a copy of Daniel Vacanti’s book on agile metrics from leanpub, or on Amazon.  Read it.

Then, get a trial to Actionable Agile. This tool visualizes data, and integrates with multiple platforms. Watch the videos on the ActionableAgile YouTube channel that gives an introduction to the tool’s capabilities.

Now, use the data and a never settle for “this is as good as it gets.” Dig in and improve your process!

Five Keys to Your New Years Resolution (and mine)

Welcome to 2018!

Did you make a new years’ resolutions? Have you managed to keep it through the first day of the new year? If so, congratulations. I’m sure you’re doing better than most folks.

I’ve never really been one to make resolutions. More precisely, I’ve dabbled in resolutions in the past, but never followed through on them. But, as the saying goes “if at first you don’t succeed….” Here’s what I’m resolving to do in 2018, and hope the five keys work for you as well. Please read to the end. There is a way you can help.

Five Keys to Your New Years Resolution

  1. Making a Public Commitment
  2. Have an Accountability Partner
  3. Be Realistic
  4. Habit Stacking
  5. Ask for Help

Step 1: Make a Public Commitment

This will be done as soon as I hit “Publish.” Of course, your “public” commitment might be to anyone who will help you with step 2.

Step 2: Have an Accountability Partner

I intend to have an accountability partner from among the fine agile coach team at my employer, AgileThought.

Step 3: Be Realistic

At times, it feels like sharing ideas needs to be  large, completely unique, or world-changing. This year, I’m just striving to share more of what I find interesting. It may not be revolutionary, but hopefully it at least sparks some conversations.

Ever since I started working as “an agile coach,” I’ve had a vague notion that I should do more public writing. Or, if not writing, I need to share my ideas and experience through conference presentations or sharing at user groups. There have been periods of time where I was fairly consistent in sharing, and there were times where I went completely silent. But, with the new year upon me, I’m going to give it a go. I’ll be posting a blog article at least once a week and tweeting something each day.

Step 4:  Habit Stacking

I’ve started reading the book Habit Stacking by S.J. Scott. This book boasts the subtitle “127 Small Changes to Improve Your Health, Wealth, and Happiness.” I’m skeptical about the subtitle’s claims, but there is an interesting notion about building habits and putting a bunch of small activities together into a single time-slot. So, that will be one of the experiments I will be running. And, I’ll let you know how that goes in a future post.

Step 5: Ask for Help

I could use your help.  If you find something interesting, please leave a comment. If you disagree, leave a comment. Just feel like saying “hi?” Leave a comment. I expect to learn from the feedback, so please leave a note.

What do you think?  What has worked for you in the past? Please leave a comment.