Measuring what matters in Agile

Recently someone asked me: "Imagine you are tasked with a new project to objectively (and programmatically) measure software developers. How would you approach this problem? What do you think the keys to success would be? Are there insights from other industries/areas do you would apply?"

For years I’ve made myself the same questions and it is a great way to show my findings. My current and best approach I have made till now is using Agility Health Radars to measure teams, products, technical health, DevOps health, leadership and enterprise Agile adoption. I mention Agile due it is my main driver to lead technical teams and tech based organizations.

I feel that the saying "measure what matters" makes sense even in Agile and it is the real key.  This is why these Radars allow me to help teams, managers and C levels to drive Strategic improvements while showing a most 360 view of the Agile impact inside the organization.

Specifically, to measure Agile Health in teams including software developers, the radar considers the following Dimensions, Subdimensions and Competences:

1. Clarity. Vision: Purpose and vision, Measure of success; Planning: Roadmap, Mid-term plan, Short-term plan; Roles: Roles, Generalizing specialists.
2. Performance. Confidence: Product owner, Team, Stakeholders; Measurements: Predictable delivery, Time to market, Value delivered, Quality, Response to change.
3. Leadership. Team facilitator: Impediment management, Servant leadership, Effective facilitation; Tech lead(s): Technical leadership, Servant leadership; Product Owner: Leadership, Backlog management, Engagement; Manager: Process improvement, People development, Servant leadership.
4. Culture. Happiness, Collaboration, Trust and respect, Creativity, Accountability.
5. Foundation. Agility: Sustainable pace, Self organization, Technical excellence, Planning and estimating, Effective meetings; Team structure: Size and skills, Allocation and stability, Environment

I facilitate and/or promote to perform this strategic retrospective at least once per quarter. The dynamic is to have a face-to-face retrospective (ideally) of at least 2.5 hours. Team and key stakeholders are invited. I launch the form that include the questions to measure each competence. At the end of the survey all the team go in depth about the findings getting help from the Radars outputs. I help the team to prioritize the topics they are going to improve in next quarter and after that I help Scrum Masters or change agents per team to reach the goals.

Few images to illustrate the power of this practice. It is a radar of a team showing the dimensions, the competences and the details of the point of view per member. Using this radars I am able to identify for instance if the team is in forming, storming, norming or performing helping me to facilitate the plans.

Insights to drive recognition and improvement plans

Understanding the improvement journey

And much more... I really feel we can reach the next Enterprise Agile level thanks to measure what matters.

Please share your thoughts.