Agility - Use all your senses

In my last post, Agility - Chasing a Moving Target, I suggested that agility involves observation and the ability to make quick decisions to adjust to changing terrain and the movements of our target. Today I want to talk more about what I mean by observation. Of course, metrics are involved but using "all your senses" means we are going to go beyond the standard metrics like Sprint burn down charts and tracking development velocity.

Using all your senses means observing not only what you are doing and how well you perceive you are doing it. I'll suggest that there are 5 general areas we need to observe to have a more complete picture of what we are doing and where we should be applying our efforts to move forward and achieve the desired outcomes.

Externally

These are the observations of how our product is doing in the market. This assumes that we have put product into the hands of our customers.  In the Agile mindset, this means short release cycles. We must quickly deliver new features and enhancements and then measure the response.  We hear a lot of talk these days about "continuous delivery".  This is literally the shortest possible release cycle. With continuous delivery, you deliver updates to your digital products every day or even multiple times a day.  Continuous delivery is a topic that deserves a much deeper dive so we'll tackle that one in another blog. My point here about external observation is that you must have the monitoring capability to see how your customers are interacting with your product. What features are they using or not using? What problems are they reporting, and what are they sharing on social media?

Of course, we could break down external metrics or observations into customer metrics, market trends, competitor's products and their performance in the market, etc. There are many pieces of data we can collect. Don't just collect them. Observer them constantly so you know what they mean and can spot trends and meaningful fluctuations. Don't collect data you can't interpret and react to.

Internally

Yes, Sprint burn down charts and measuring development velocity can be helpful. I break internal metrics into three sub-categories:

1. Productivity
2. Efficiency
3. Quality

Productivity is the output measure. How much work are we getting done?  Efficiency is the measure of what it costs us to get that work done. The more efficient we are, the more value the team can deliver without increasing the size of the team. Quality level affects efficiency. If we produce high quality work, we spend much less time and effort (cost) going back and fixing defects or reworking something that did not meet expectations.  Measuring quality can be a lengthy discussion so we'll save it for another blog post.

Financial

We cannot talk about observation and exclude financial impacts.  Product development involves expenses and there must be some quantitative measure of the return on that investment. Again, there are many ways we may be measuring value that go beyond just the standard revenue or profit margin metrics, but we better have a clear understanding of our financial model and expectations and track our performance over time.

Operational

Under the internal heading I referred to efficiency metrics. There we were talking about product development efficiency. Here we are talking about operational efficiency. This includes things like the ability to release, support and maintain the product.  We don't want to put all that effort into developing a high quality product and then not have it accessible to our customers. Under this category we may be observing all kinds of performance and stability metrics. This may also include keeping data secure, having business continuity plans, and responding to regulatory or compliance issues.

People

Talking about people last does not in any way indicate it is less important. In fact, it may be the most important thing you measure. The capacity, engagement level, and performance of your teams will determine the success or failure of your organization. You need to constantly assess the makeup of your teams.  Do you have the right people, with the right skills and tools to do the job you are asking them to do? Do you have leaders who inspire and share a vision that provides every individual with a sense of purpose and urgency? If you don't know then you are not observing your people.

In conclusion, you can't just measure one aspect of your organization's performance. Use all your senses and see the whole picture. Your ability to grow as a business is a complex interdependence of multiple factors.  Look at the whole system and identify all potential areas of weakness.  Figuring out what to measure and how to interpret what you observe is not easy.  Every business is unique but you are not alone.  Let's work together to share our experiences and lessons learned.

Comments are welcome and you can also reach out to me directly at eric@byronconsultingservices.com.