James 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.

The software development industry has a poor track record with metrics. Many metrics are tangential to development’s goal of delivering business value, and are thus ill-regarded by agile developers. However, good metrics are important to management, in order to understand the status and progress of their teams, and to make projections into the future.

In this class we discuss velocity, burndown graphs, EVM metrics (CPI and SPI), and earned business value, including methods for calculation, why they’re important, and how they enforce (or fight against) agile values.