Agile projects are 28% more successful than traditional projects. 

Working on agile methodologies has resulted in several benefits including shorter time to market, lower costs just to name a few. But, the relevant question here is whether this transition can happen only by switching to this method? 

The answer is no! 

Without bringing in the role of agile metrics into the picture, agile methodology is merely a method. In order to realize the value gained from the method, these metrics aid in monitoring productivity across the stages of the custom software development life cycle. Our company has taken full advantage of agile by making the necessary switch a long time ago. This post will go a long way in strengthening your understanding of these metrics and why they matter for success. 

What Are Agile Metrics?

Essentially the term metric implies a standard of measurement that helps a software development team to understand their own products across the different levels of custom software development. Often reduced to nothing, this is one of the most important components of the software development process because these metrics help companies and teams to focus on assessing and certifying the software quality by – 

• Identifying areas of improvement
• Managing workloads
• Reducing overtime
• Reducing costs and increasing ROI

Agile metrics help us keep the team performance in check. The data, as well as the usage so got, are measurably making it easy to work on loopholes, if any, right at the initial state. 

Why do Agile Metrics hold importance?

The major goal of tracking and evaluating software metrics is to determine the quality of the current product, process and improve the quality once the project is complete. At a more basic level, it is important because it :

• Enhances communication
• Fosters Innovation
• Makes the development team more organised
• Adaptation to changes becomes smooth
• Supports sharing of ideas and resources
• Enhances focus on quality output

Metrics are important components of management across workflow stages, debugging, quality assurance, cost estimation and extremely important for developers and team leaders. 

The ten most powerful Agile Metrics needed for project management

In terms of software project development, agile metrics are very important as it boldens the understanding of the development process, tracks the efforts applied and also eases the overall software release process. 

1. Sprint Burndown report

The agile framework has scrum teams working together for the development project. We have applied this metric in one of our chatbot platform development project in which our team divided the process into sprints. Every sprint is time-bound as progress can be tracked frequently. The sprint burn-down report helps in apprehending the completion of diverse tasks during the sprint. 

Source: Dzone

The main parameters of the metric are time and work left to do. Here the measurement is done in terms of hours. The forecast is done at the start of the project workload at the beginning of the sprint. The prime target is to ensure that by the end of the sprint the entire workload is complete.

2. Epic and Release Burndown

Compared to Sprint burndown, this metric focuses on the larger picture. Progress is tracked over a large work body. The entire team becomes aware of the flow of work in the epic and version. The different epic and release burndown charts make it easy. The method shows the progress of the team against the work for an epic, an epic being a large user story that can be broken down into smaller bits.

Source: ResearchGate

3. Control Chart

For one of the web application development projects, we used the control chart metric to measure performance. This metric was used by us to check the cycle time of a single issue. We realized this was a sure shot way to have high throughput as it was divided into shorter cycle times. When this was measured it improved the flexibility of the processes. In such cases when changes are made, results are visible instantaneously.Hence, the main target here is to achieve a consistent and short cycle time in a specific sprint.

Source: Medium

2. Lead Time

A very simple concept that implies the period between the request and when the actual delivery takes place. It is a term that has been taken from the manufacturing industry but applying it in software circles, it implies the time between the identification of the requirement and its fulfillment. The entire set of processes that brings a product closer to the completion stage come under lead time. The lead time metrics also counts in the bug fixing time. The best part about it is that it provides the correct time required for every process.

5. Velocity

This metric measures the average work that the software development team does in a sprint. The report has several iterations and the projection correctness depends on the number of iterations. If there are more iterations, the forecast tends to be more precise. Here the unit of measurement is story point or hours. It also helps in determining the ability of the team to work through backlogs. Velocity is self-evolving but to ensure there is consistency in the project development, velocity has to be tracked. If the velocity reduces, it is a clear indication that there has to be some fixing done.

Source: Software testing studio

6. Net Promoter Score

This is one of the methods widely used that talks about how much the customer is willing to refer the product to someone else. The NPS is an index ranging from -100 to 100.

7. Work Item Age

As the name implies it is the aging work in progress and directs the time that has passed between the start and completion of the task. This metric is mainly used when the team has to detect the timeline for unfinished tasks. When this metric is used, one can estimate the movement of the present tasks and also be in a position to compare the previous performance to the current one given the similar context.

8. Throughput

This metric measures the average number of tasks processed in a unit of time. It is a great representation of the team’s productivity level and also understands how business performance is affected by the workflow.

9. Escaped defects

When there are bugs in the software development process, it sure causes a lot of harm to the overall project. The problems so posed need addressal by identifying the bugs when the release enters the production. Ideally escaped defects should be zero. The software quality can be evaluated in the raw form.

10. Failed deployments

It measures the number of deployments. It helps to get a fair understanding of how sturdy ecosystems are and if the teams are building stronger shippable software. It is a clear indication that sprints are production-ready or not. Basically it is a quality metric.

The road ahead

Consistent implementation of agile metrics has made our custom software development solutions and processes clear, precise and apparent. Only applying agile principles is not enough, it is also important to implement agile metrics if one is aiming at success. 

Take advantage of our agile workflow in your next software development project and let us manage it for you.