Metrics in an Agile World
Add to calendarJames Shore (coauthor of The Art of Agile Development) and Rob Myers of Agile Institute help you examine the role of metrics on Agile teams. We take a broad survey of metrics being used on Agile projects, both traditional and innovative, and look at the value and dangers to the success of the team. We look at how the simple act of measuring, itself, can be harmful, and when it is well-justified. Metrics at every level of the Agile organization will receive scrutiny: Measuring value, team performance, progress, quality, and even code design attributes will be taken into consideration.
Part presentation, part workshop. We will start with a few slides to present key quotes, images, and of course Dilbert cartoons. We will be encouraging lively discussion throughout.
We plan to review some of the best published research in the Agile community for examples of both good, bad, and misused metrics. We will also tap our combined experience as coaches for anecdotal examples of measurement-gone-wrong. The goal of the presentation and follow-up discussions is to give the attendees a clear set of guidelines for considering the worth of a particular measurement to the team, organization, and individuals. We want to convey the serious implications of explicitly or implicitly removing the “human-factor” from any metric.
The only exercise is this one: We would like the audience as a whole to have significant input into the metrics guidelines. I suspect we will use a common retrospective technique (arranging anonymous post-its into clusters) to obtain some level of consensus.
- Metrics as an end in themselves vs. metrics as means to an end.
- When to measure what you already know.
- Measuring software’s value.
- Pros and cons of various productivity metrics.
- Defect tracking and the bottom-line.
- Pros and cons of automating qualitative code metrics.