Applying Evidence-Based Management (EBM) in Your Organization
Tags: ebm, scrum, agile, dora
Published: 2024-07-16 14:47:40

At Leading EDJE, we're on a relentless quest to enhance and measure the impact of our work. Harnessing the transformative power of Evidence-Based Management (EBM), a framework designed to complement your Agile practice, can revolutionize your approach to data-driven decision-making, empowering your teams to deliver value and achieve their goals.

**The Foundation of EBM**

EBM is deeply rooted in measurement — it's about translating data into actionable insights that align with your company's strategic goals. It's not just about doing work; it's about ensuring the work we do matters to the end customer. This approach can be particularly powerful in agile environments, like Scrum, but its principles are universally applicable.

**Building an EBM Dashboard**

The EBM Dashboard is a central tool in applying EBM. It visualizes your team's progress against key goals and measures. Here’s how you can construct an effective dashboard:

Start with Goals: Define Strategic, Intermediate, and Immediate Tactical Goals.

- Strategic Goals: Long-term, big-picture objectives.
- Intermediate Goals: Support the strategic goals, often aligning with or same as product goals.
- Immediate Tactical Goals: The daily work driving towards your sprint goals.

Key Value Areas (KVAs): These are the lenses through which you view value:

- Current Value: The value you're delivering now.
- Unrealized Value: Potential value that could be delivered.
- Ability to Innovate: How effectively you can introduce new capabilities.
- Time to Market: Ho
w quickly you can deliver new capabilities.

Key Value Measures (KVMs): These are the metrics you track under each KVA. They should be informative, actionable, and relevant to your goals.

**Example Dashboard** 

![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/gklpq2fsuzczzspdw44n.png)
*from Unlocking Business Agility with Evidence Based Management

**Using the Dashboard**

Once you've built your dashboard, it's pivotal to use it effectively:

- Review Regularly: Update and review the dashboard in line with your sprint cadence.
- Data-Driven Decisions: Use the dashboard to make informed decisions and adjust your approach when necessary.
- Team Ownership: Ideally, the Agile team should collectively own and contribute to the dashboard.

**The Role of Experimentation**

Experimentation is integral to EBM and Scrum. Each sprint, release, or iteration, depending on your agile methodology, can be seen as an experiment to test hypotheses. By aligning your sprint goals with your hypothesis, you ensure each sprint is a step towards validating your approach and delivering value.

**Applying EBM Across Various Scenarios**

Whether you're on a Scrum team or not, EBM principles can be adapted to fit your work context. Here are some scenarios of how EBM could help: 

- No Clear Goals: If your team doesn’t have goals, begin by asking questions to identify goals at the company or project level.
- Solo Contributors: Measure individual contributions and look for ways to connect them to larger goals.
- Non-product Development Teams: Even if you’re not building a product, use EBM to focus on organizational capabilities (like Time to Market) and how your work indirectly add
s value.


**Engage with EBM**

Implementing EBM is not about rigidly following a set formula; it's about thinking critically about what to measure and why. It involves continuous learning, adaptation, a willingness to ask the hard questions and have the hard conversations.

As we move forward, it's clear that EBM will become an increasingly important part of how effective teams work. By providing feedback and sharing our experiences, we can shape how EBM is implemented across our organizations.

EBM is a journey, not a destination. By adopting its principles and actively engaging with the process, we can all contribute to a culture of continuous improvement and evidence-based decision-making.