This is a counter warning to my article on magical numbers. Magical Numbers are a useful abstraction – a way of measuring less without learning less. Without finding these numbers, you end up investing too much in collecting detailed measurements that make the real story hard to fathom, but Magical Numbers allow you to collect […]
The long standing question of metrics, measurement and performance in Agile teams has people in quite a muddle. This is one of the most common themes of questioning on the forums and boards. People want to use velocity as a measure, or record detailed numbers about who did what tasks. The answer to this question […]
So you have a team with a velocity of 85 points per Sprint and you decide they could do more. So you set them a stretch target of 100 points for the next Sprint. What happens next? Because you get what you measure, you might get 100 points. This is the worst possible thing that […]
This is a phrase that should pop into your head whenever you are thinking about introducing a metric to a team. You get what you measure. It really is that simple. Most good-natured people are trying to determine whether the team is being effective or whether they are improving over time. This can seem quite […]