Assessing whether team is using scrum effectively
I have been looking up for tools that will give visuals for everyone in the team to understand improvement areas, be agile, and use scrum effectively for its benefits.
Has any one used tools like
1 : this (Agile Maturity for Teams excel template) that gives a radar
2: this (zombie scrum symptom checker) that gives more comprehensive reports. The team members who built this tool ( Barry Overeem , Christiaan Verwijs ) have few blogs on scrum.org so finding this one more reliable.
The intent to use tool#2 to complete this exercise is to generate a visual (it will be much more interesting for team to assess themselves by moving sliders) than doing it in a discussion based mode / using other techniquies like liberating structures.
Thoughts/Suggestions?
I'm always a bit curious why to use tools over discussion. In my personal experience (which by no means is the correct way or any point of truth) tools leads to satisfying metrics over actually improving towards business agility and the delivery of value.
I have been looking up for tools that will give visuals for everyone in the team to understand improvement areas, be agile, and use scrum effectively for its benefits.
Why? Aren't tools a last resort, and something you would prefer to avoid?
Aren't tools a last resort, and something you would prefer to avoid?
Prefer to avoid over what? I intend to use it as a means to have the discussion. So the tool usage is not going to replace any individuals and interactions over processes and tools. I am looking for a means that covers all the aspects of improving / being agaile and using scrum effectively.
@Ian hope this answers the why.
Why is the Sprint Retrospective not a satisfactory tool for this? My experience is that tools will lead to teams focusing on the metrics being used to present the graphs which often can be counter productive to actual promoting meaningful improvements.
So the tool usage is not going to replace any individuals and interactions over processes and tools.
Are you sure your approach to tool usage wouldn’t do that? Wouldn’t it be better if team members inspected their situation for themselves, and then adapted accordingly?
My experience is that tools will lead to teams focusing on the metrics being used to present the graphs which often can be counter productive to actual promoting meaningful improvements.
Exactly my point.
I'm not sure what your goal is, but I liked the agile fluency model (martin fowler is one of the names that cone to mind related to this model)
This model can help figure out improvement areas. You could visualize the collective outcome if you want, and use this model on a regular basis to let the team inspect it's agile maturity.