Published on the 19/09/2014 | Written by Beverley Head
Agile development shops need to take a fresh approach to software testing and measure the success of software development according to a team’s ability to deliver what is expected by the business…
Agile specialist Rally Software has identified six key metrics that should be used to determine the success of Agile software development efforts. According to Rally Software transformation consultant Eric Willeke, the key issue is to treat Agile teams as “capability units”.
These are then measured using six key metrics, namely; productivity, which tracks how many functions are delivered for a given investment; predictability of output – that the business gets what it was expecting, which he said was particularly important; quality of output, which measures defects; responsiveness in terms of time to market; employee engagement on the development team; and customer satisfaction, often tracked using net promoter scores.
According to Willeke software project teams using more traditional waterfall approaches to development have been over-measuring for years – but they haven’t necessarily been measuring the right things.
“Agile shops are more likely to measure the things that matter and less likely to measure everything,” said Willeke who recently visited A/NZ to speak at an Agile conference.
The need for well thought through measurement of Agile efforts has increased as the approach has become more widespread. According to Willeke: “Perhaps ten years ago Agile was viewed as a cowboy method. Now we have seen two generations of managers who have grown up with Agile.”
Adoption of Agile is still not uniform however. Willeke said that there were pockets of excellence in organisations all over the world, while there were still large portions of businesses which had yet to get started.
Australia is line ball with the rest of the world in terms of its adoption of Agile software development techniques, New Zealand; “Is in a different place because there are generally smaller companies involved,” according to Willeke.
He said that smaller companies, while able to change faster than big outfits, generally had less interest in making the transition.
However he said that in a decade of working with organisations of every size on Agile projects, “I have yet to see an effort where I would have selected waterfall over Agile”.
