Self-assessment tool to measure agile maturity

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Johan Immelman's picture

Can anyone help me with an effective self-assessment tool to measure agile maturity in our organisation.

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agile
agile transition

12 Answers

Johanna Rothman's picture

Johan, the real question is why do you want to know? What benefit will you gain from learning this answer?

Here are some questions to get you started:

1. If you are doing iterations, are they four weeks or less? The answer should be yes. Many of us like one or two week iterations. Why? Because you get feedback more often rather than less often.

2. Do you have demos at the end of each and every iteration? The answer should be yes. Why? To get the feedback from the customer/Product Owner.

3. Do you get every item in the backlog to done at the end of every iteration? The answer should be yes. For many teams on their journey, the answer is "not yet." This does not make you bad, it makes you "on your journey." You want to discover why.

4. Do you perform retrospectives at the end of each iteration to learn and inspect/adapt to improve your team's agile process?

5. Do you look at your work in process and monitor that?

6. If you use iterations, do you measure your velocity with a burn up chart and make sure it does not look like a hockey stick?

7. If you are using kanban, do you measure your cycle time? Are you happy with your cycle time? (Did I just use a word that did not make sense to you :-)

8. Do you measure cumulative flow?

Now, you have a set of questions for a self assessment. Hmm, maybe I should blog this! I could get feedback and improve it.

Johanna

Jason Little's picture

It's not something I'd use to compare teams or for management to use, it's something teams can use to see how they are doing and what they could do to improve.

Other than that, my beleif is "how agile you are" is irrelavent.  Are you satisfying your customers?  I prefer to use NPS (net promotor score) as a customer satisfaction measure and you can run NPS surveys with customers (actual people who use your solutions) or stakeholders.  It's a lagging indicator and, to me, it's most effective measure of how well we're doing as an organization.

Ben Linders's picture

Over the years, I've collected information about agile self assessment tools, checklists, etc. Today I published a page which lists all know ton me: http://www.benlinders.com/agile-self-assessments/

Which checklist / tool do you use to assess how agile and lean you are? Let me know!

Tamara Tairi's picture

Hello,

The best way for accessing the needs of your Testing took is to gather evidence of incidence reports, putting together a list of things to improve in the form of better error reporting and analyzing it in comparison to the specific needs and requirements set as the project initialized. For example, it's best to guide an Agile process according to the methodology that is most current and relevant to your company needs. Of course, the most effective way to ensure that metrics are set in terms of reporting and analytics for data is to track specific changes with a customizable tool like Zephyr. 

http://www.getzephyr.com/resources/whitepapers/qa-metrics-value-testing-...

Regards.

Tamara Tairi's picture

Hello,

The best way for accessing the needs of your testing team is to gather evidence of incidence reports, putting together a list of things to improve in the form of better error reporting and analyzing it in comparison to the specific needs and requirements set as the project initialized. For example, it's best to guide an Agile process according to the methodology that is most current and relevant to your company needs. Of course, the most effective way to ensure that metrics are set in terms of reporting and analytics for data is to track specific changes with a customizable tool like Zephyr. 

http://www.getzephyr.com/resources/whitepapers/qa-metrics-value-testing-...

Regards.

Kanika Vatsyayan's picture

Though it is a good thought to go for self-assessment of your agile practices, I think I would be able to give some good tool suggestions based on your requirements I.e. the objective behind the use of agile practices and the approach that you are using to implement agile into your operations.  

 

Meanwhile, if you need to know some good tools, I would suggest you evaluate your project management reports and incidents using Jira or Trello.  

Milla Ahonen's picture

Xebia essentials is the perfect tool to analyse agile maturity.

Kanika Vatsyayan's picture

I think before you go for any tools to check on measurable performance that you drive from your agile initiatives, the assessment process already begins at the implementation level within the team. Clear and transparent communication within the team that aims at productive iterations is the first thing that helps assess the outcomes of the agile in the operations. 

 

Besides, you can rely on some project management tool that could help you keep track of your measured goals to ensure that your agile strategy is working fine. Besides, you can also check for the customer response, scaling of business, and other factors that can help you understand the performance variations.  

 

Read in detail about the Checklist To Set Up QA Processes In An Agile Environment 

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