An agile software metric essentially is a software characteristic that is quantifiable and countable. Agile metrics are important for different reasons including software performance, planning work, productivity measurement and so on. Within the product software development process, there are many metrics that are related to each other and form an important part of the success.
Agile methods have been transformative for many companies but merely working on the method won’t suffice. It is equally important to measure the changes and see if they have been successful or not. For that, the article focuses on ten of the most powerful agile metrics that will help in building software projects in a better and bigger manner.
First, let’s understand what Agile Metrics are
The term is nothing but a standard of measurement that helps the development teams to understand the progress and the process refinement of their products across different levels of custom software development. These metrics help companies to focus on certifying the software quality.
Sprint Burndown report
Under this metric framework, scrum teams work together for the project. Here each process is divided into sprints. Every sprint is given a time limit and the progress of each sprint can be calculated along with the project. The sprint burndown report helps in the easy management and completion of different tasks during the sprint.
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.
Epic and Release Burndown
In this agile metric progress is tracked at a macro level rather than micro pieces of the project. The workflow is known at the beginning which is valuable to construct the chart. This method evaluates the progress of the team against the work for an epic.
Control Chart
It is the duration from the beginning of the development to the complete status. The metric is used to check the cycle time of a single issue. It is a good metric to have high throughput as it comprises shorter cycle times. The metric is excellent to improve the scalability of the process. Even the changes so made can be seen with results instantly shown. Based on the feedback adjustments can be made immediately.
Lead Time
The lead time concept is a very basic concept that denotes the time between the request made and when the actual delivery is made. The teams identify the duration between identification of the issue and its fulfillment. It comprises several processes that bring a product close to the completion stage. It also includes the bug fixing time and it also provides accurate time for every process.
Velocity
It is a measure that brings out the average work that the software development team does in a sprint. The report contains many iterations and the more the iterations the better forecast. The unit of measurement can be story points or hours. It helps in understanding the ability of the team to work in backlogs.
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.
Work Item Age
This metrics help in tracking the progress of the development cycle and also talks about the time that has been sourced between the start and the completion of the task. The team uses this metric to understand the timeline, especially for unfinished tasks. With the use of this metric one can evaluate the movement of the current tasks in hand and also make a relative comparison to the earlier performances under the same context.
Throughput
Another important metric often used by the organization in combination with other metrics is this. It depicts the team’s productivity level and also understands how the performance of the business unit is affected by the workflow.
Escaped defects
Software bugs can be a huge impediment to the progress of the project. It can hamper the smooth flow of the process and bring the work to a standstill. Such problems have to be addressed in the initial stage so that they are tackled within the initial stage itself before it is released for production. Here the quality of the software can be determined in the raw form itself.
Failed deployments
This metric measures the number of deployments done. It also helps in the rational understanding of the strong working environment and is a great indicator to see if the teams are building user-ready software or not. The sprints are carefully analyzed in order to check if the software is production-ready or not.
It is not merely enough when you switch over to agile methodology for your software development process. It is also important to measure how the processes are working after the application of application principles. If you are aiming at success, then these metrics have to be used.
Our projects are laced with advanced metrics which has helped us deliver the projects well on time and with better productivity and result.
