Here’s How Business Metrics Are Used in the Agile Process
Tags: Agile, Business Development, Business Management, Agile Methodology, Business Strategy

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

Making the right decisions in your business can be hard. But by tracking the right agile business metrics you can safely know what your business needs and the next course of action.

Here are some of the most important business metrics and how they are used in the Agile process.

What Are Agile Metrics?

Agile metrics provide your company with insight into the productivity of your software during the different life cycles of development. Essentially, these metrics tell you what is working during your software development and what is not.

If you are looking to read more about the agile process and the details about agile software development you can read this article.

What Are The Best Agile Metrics to Track?

There can often be a big question of what metrics truly matter when you are tracking your numbers and what is just unnecessary.

Here are the best agile metrics to track to increase your software productivity during the different life cycles of development.

Sprint Burnout Run

Scrum teams run sprints when working on the development of the software. A sprint run is time tracked to see what work can be completed during a specific amount of time.

You are looking at the work that is left to complete and time.

The main goal of a sprint burnout run is to have all of your work completed at the end of the sprint.

Velocity

Velocity measures the average workload that a team does during a sprint burnout run.

When working with a team there needs to be strong problem-solving skills. Velocity also tracks how quickly a team can work through a blockage or problem.

Epic and Release Burnout

Epic and release burnout is directly related to a sprint. A sprint burnout is tracking the work completed for a specific task of a project.

An epic and release burnout tracks the bigger body of work. It is very important to track both metrics.

Control Chart

The time it takes to mark a specific task from “in progress” to “complete” is what a control chart tracks.

Being able to understand the cycle time of an issue that arises in the project. Teams who can have a very consistent control chart are often very reliable with delivery dates and getting work done on time.

Looking at charts and reporting these analytics is one of the most important aspects of metrics. If you want to understand more about how actiTIME helps you report and understand your analytics, click here.

Lead Time

When a request for delivery of a product is made and the amount it takes before delivery is what you are tracking when you are tracking lead time.

Lead time agile metrics cover the entire process of the project from developing a business requirement to fixing bugs.

Understanding how agile and lean software processes relate to each other can help boost the lead time of a project. Read more about that in this article.

Value Delivered

Value delivered is the metric that is used when trying to determine the priority of each step in the project.

Project managers can assign value to each project. The more points or monetary value that a step in the project has, the bigger the priority.

Cumulative Flow Diagram

When working on a project it is paramount that the team works together and inputs the same amount of work. The cumulative flow diagram uses time on one axis and the number of issues on the other axis.

Blocked Time

Any blocked task is going to impede the project and does not allow critical work to be done. If for some reason someone can not complete a task this is changing the productivity metrics of the project.

So tracking when a team member can not proceed with a task is important.

If there is some dependency on someone else or another task to be done, you need to understand where that is coming from.

Quality Intelligence

You use quality intelligence as a metric you are tracking the quality of the software. If there are any recent code changes or testing on the new codes have not been done, the quality intelligence will catch that.

Your team can then determine if more testing needs to happen to ensure the best quality of work.

One of the Most Important Metrics to Focus On

Time tracking is an essential part of agile metrics. If you notice, almost all the key metrics that were discussed have some element of time that is being used.

How long the entire project is taking

How long it takes to solve a problem that the team is having

The length of a specific task sprint

The time covered from when you have the task “in progress” to “complete”

So understanding that you need to be tracking the length of individual tasks as well as the entire project.

actiTIME Tracks Your Business Metrics for You

We just discussed how agile metrics can bring a lot more clarity into your business’s development. As we know, tracking time is one of the essential business metrics. actiTIME makes tracking time extremely easy.

There are neat time tracking sheets where you and your employees can input your data. You can track your time and even leave comments.

You can review individual timesheets for each employee. Reviewing the individual timesheets allows you to see the hours distributed between the projects or clients. Approving timesheets is also a feature that you can use to help your business.

One of the other business time tracking tools that actiTIME offers is the ability to set automatic reminders. You and your employees will never forget to track your time again.

If you want to go sign up for actiTIME, you can do so now. Happy time tracking!