agile software development process metrics

Question

Hi, all.

I'm interested in where to find information about agile software engineering development process metrics, what kind of variables are assessed to evaluate such processes? I'm interested in productivity, timeliness, staff utilization, and quality.

I'm building an agent-based simulation to model an agile software development process and I'm trying to find real world data to see if my model is predicting things correctly. To be more specific, does productivity (and staff utilization) follow an oscillating pattern over time throughout a software process?

Thanks!

Answer 1

Measurement is often very tricky and one should always keep the following quote in mind:

"Tell me how [and when] you’ll measure me, and I’ll tell you how I’ll behave." -- Eliyahu M. Goldratt

This doesn't mean measurement is impossible, it just means you have to do it in a really smart way and, actually, I especially like the system that Mary Poppendieck recommends. This system is based on three holistic measurements that must be taken as a package:

1. Cycle time
   • From product concept to first release or
   • From feature request to feature deployment or
   • From bug detection to resolution
2. Business Case Realization (without this, everything else is irrelevant)
   • P&L or
   • ROI or
   • Goal of investment
3. Customer Satisfaction
   • e.g. Net Promoter Score

I don't need more to know if we are in phase with the ultimate goal: providing value to users, and fast.