How can we advertise the effectiveness of our Scrum Teams to the rest of our organization? In many of my engagements, I have been asked this question. Recently a client needed to show the success of agile to their upper management. Together we created these 3 ways to show Scrum Team effectiveness outside of your self-managing team.
Number 1: Speed to Market
Many organizations adopt the Scrum framework with the primary goal of enhancing their speed to market. One effective way to measure this improvement is through the DORA metric known as "deployment frequency."
Explanation: Deployment frequency measures how often your teams deploy software changes to the customer. Start tracking this metric over time, observing the trend in the frequency of deployments. An increase in deployment frequency reflects the team's ability to deliver value quickly and respond to customer needs more efficiently.
Adaptation to Organizational Culture: Tailor the discussion of speed to market based on your organization's culture. Emphasize the importance of delivering tangible results faster and align the metric with the specific goals and expectations of your company.
Note on Self-Management: Encourage teams to take ownership of the deployment frequency metric. Self-managing this measurement ensures authenticity and prevents teams from gaming the system.
Number 2: Improve Quality
Scrum not only focuses on speed but also places a strong emphasis on enhancing the quality of deliverables. Complementary practices and metrics, such as measuring defects that escape to production and utilizing the DORA metric "Change Failure Rate," can be instrumental in achieving this.
Explanation: Track the number of defects that reach the production environment. Concurrently, use the Change Failure Rate metric to measure the success of changes introduced by the team. A decreasing trend in these metrics indicates a continuous improvement in the quality of the team's work.
Adaptation to Organizational Culture: Connect the discussion on quality improvement to your organization's values. Emphasize the importance of delivering reliable software and the positive impact it has on customer satisfaction.
Note on Self-Management: Encourage teams to proactively address defects and failures. Incorporate these issues into retrospectives to foster a culture of continuous improvement.
Number 3: Customer Satisfaction - Improve Delivering Features Customers Want
Scrum's quick feedback loops empower Product Owners to experiment with delivering features rapidly. Customer satisfaction is a vital metric that reflects the success of delivering features customers actually want.
Explanation: Utilize the quick feedback loops of Scrum to experiment with delivering small slivers of functionality. Deploy these features to production and closely monitor customer usage. Product Owners can leverage this data to inform future feature development, leading to increased customer satisfaction over time.
Adaptation to Organizational Culture: Align the discussion on customer satisfaction with the unique values of your organization. Emphasize the role of customer feedback in shaping the product and how Scrum facilitates this iterative process.
Note on Self-Management: Encourage teams to take ownership of customer satisfaction metrics. By actively tracking and responding to customer needs, teams demonstrate their commitment to delivering value that resonates with the end-users.
In conclusion, these three metrics—speed to market, quality improvement, and customer satisfaction—serve as strong indicators of the effectiveness of Scrum Teams. Tailoring the discussion to fit your organization's culture and promoting self-management of these metrics will enhance their authenticity and impact.