Improving agile team efficiency

1. How to Improve
Agile Team
Efficiency
Himanshu Desai (@H_Desai)
Principal Consultant, Technical Specialist
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2. Page
Agenda
› Measures and Metrics & their suitability
› Quality
› Velocity
› Burndown
› Burnup
› Business Value Delivered
› Cumulative Flow Diagram
› Takeaway
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3. Page
Bad Metrics
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› Continental Airlines example
› Reducing Fuel Consumption as metrics
› Programming Example
› When you reward programmers who write lots of
code and fix lots of bugs

4. Page
Good metrics
› Affirmandreinforceagileprinciples
› Measureoutcome,notoutput
› Followtrendsnotnumbers
› Belongtoasmallsetofmetrics/diagnostics
› "Should provide fuelformeaningful conversations"
› Diagnose&improvetheprocessesthatproducebusinessvalue
› Providefeedbackonafrequentandregularbasis
› Areeasytocollect
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5. Page
Quality
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6. Page
Quality
› Code Coverage
› Maintability
› Technical Debt Register
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7. Page
Velocity
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Sprint 1 Sprint 2 Sprint 3 Sprint 4 Sprint 5 Sprint 6
StoryPoints
Sprints
Velocity

9. Page
Pop Quiz
› Team 1
› Velocity : 50 story points
› Team 2
› Velocity: 52 story points
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10. Page
Velocity
› It is not a goal
› Rate at which team can produce working software
› Factors
› Toolset
› Team composition
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Goodhart's
law
“When a measure
becomes a target, it
ceases to be a good
measure.”

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Velocity – Myths
› Higher velocity is always a good thing
› Not true because….
› Techdebtisbad
› Pushingtoohardonnewproductvalueandvelocitytendstoincreasetechdebt
› Key Point : Measure and limit tech debt accumulation
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13. Page
Burndown
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14. Page
Burndown
› Rate at which features are completed
› Completed at sprint and release level
› Point in time measurement of amount of work left to
be done
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POINTS/HOURS
TIME
Burndown
Actual Remaining Ideal

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Burndown
Actual Remaining Ideal

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POINTS/HOURS
TIME
Burndown
Actual Remaining Ideal

18. Page
Burnup
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19. Page
Burnup
› Same as burn-down but...
› Instead of tracking how much work is left to be done,
we track how much work is completed so the curve
goes up, not down
› Provides the visibility of scope changes.
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StoryPoints
Time
Burnup
Actual Scope

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StoryPoints
Time
Burnup
Actual Scope

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Important points
› Effectively sized and testable stories.
› Allow finishing work to end quickly
› Focus on few stories at a time, rather than work on too
much at once
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23. Page
How to achieve this?
› Get the product owner to provide INVEST stories.
› Provide more visibility to WHERE work is before its
DONE
› Manage the work in progress to drive focus
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24. Page
Business Value Delivered
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Sprint 1 Sprint 2 Sprint 3 Sprint 4 Sprint 5
Cumulative Business Value Delivered

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Business Value Delivered
› Assign business value to features.
› Best to assign at the epic level or group of user stories.
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Cumulative Flow Diagram
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Cumulative Flow Diagram
› The idea is to visualize where the features/stories are in
the workflow across time.
› Helps you to visualize work status in more depth
› Manage the work in progress to drive focus
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StoriesComplete
Time (Weeks)
Cumulative Flow Diagram
8. Done 7. Await Merge 6. Await Acc. 5. Testing
4. Code Review 3. Design Review 2. In Progress 1. To Do
WIP

30. Page
Take away
› What you don’t measure, you can not improve
› Use of burnup in conjunction with burndown.
› Spread the work evenly to reduce risk of leftovers.
› Velocity is not a goal
› Use CFD to identify bottleneck and take corrective
action
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31. Page
Take away (Continued)
› Track Business Value Delivered. All features should be
quantified with business value. Aim for smaller feature
› Defects per sprint gives you an idea of how well the
sprint is going
› Don’t ignore developer satisfaction
› Pay up technical debt
› Manage code coverage
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32. Page / Copyright ©2014 by Readify Pty Ltd34

33. Page
Make it all visible
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34. Page
Thank you
Himanshu Desai
Himanshu.desai@readify.net
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