Typical Agile Metrics

In agile it is important to stay up to date with any tracking and reporting of a project. There needs to be an emphasis on knowing what the business needs and so you can relay the information back to the team. Tracking both the business needs and the agile metrics will be key in the development process.

Sprint Burndown
The scrum meetings should incorporate a burndown report showing the completion of tasks throughout the process. The X axis will represent time and the Y will represent the work that is incomplete measured in either points or work hours. (Image from Atlassian)

In this chart we see that the forecast for the work is about the same throughout the sprints. It also accounts for the days that the team is not working. The drop in the remaining value indicates that tasks have been finalized. Things to watch for include not committing enough work, committing too much work, steep drops due to course-grained pieces, and the product owner’s additions and changes in the scope mid sprint.

Release Burndown
Release burndowns are also known as version or epic charts. They track the progress of a larger body of work. They help in guiding the team through the differences in several epics and versions. Scope creep is a usual consequence in the agile process so it is best to track any changes the scope has gone through whether it be new features or just something that the product owner wants to remove or incorporate. (Image from Atlassian)

In this chart we see the big picture of the burndown with the forecast, completed, remaining, and any work that has been added to the sprints. Things to look out for are: scope creep, the progress completed,  and any incremental changes.

Velocity
Velocity is the amount of work completed in a sprint over the amount of work left or in other word it’s the average of the amount of work either in value points or work hours. It is important to note the change in velocity throughout the project. The software requirements may not be optimized by the team and so visually seeing it through a chart will help in guiding the team through the planning and retrospective.

(Image from Atlassian) Things to look out for is any unplanned roadblocks, if the business is affecting sprints, and if the team is too zealous in forecasting the sprints.

Citations

Atlassian Five Agile Metrics You Won't Hate The Agile Coach. In: Atlassian. https://www.atlassian.com/agile/metrics. Accessed 27 Nov 2017

In: Burndown Charts. http://www.agilenutshell.com/burndown. Accessed 27 Nov 2017