How do you report Scrum metrics while maintaining confidentiality?

1 Identify your stakeholders

The first step to reporting Scrum metrics is to identify who needs to see them and why. Different stakeholders may have different interests, expectations, and levels of access to your project data. For example, your product owner may want to see the product backlog, the sprint backlog, and the burndown chart to monitor the scope, schedule, and budget of the project. Your Scrum master may want to see the velocity, the sprint review, and the retrospective to facilitate the team's collaboration, learning, and improvement. Your customers or end-users may want to see the product demo, the customer satisfaction, and the feedback to evaluate the value and quality of the product. Your senior management or external auditors may want to see the return on investment, the risk assessment, and the compliance to verify the strategic alignment and governance of the project.

2 Choose your metrics wisely

The second step to reporting Scrum metrics is to choose the ones that are relevant, meaningful, and actionable for your stakeholders. You don't want to overwhelm them with too many or too complex metrics that may confuse or distract them from the main goals of the project. Additionally, you should be careful to not use unreliable, inaccurate, or misleading metrics that could damage your credibility or trust. Common Scrum metrics include a product backlog, sprint backlog, burndown chart, velocity, sprint review, retrospective, product demo, customer satisfaction, feedback, return on investment, risk assessment, and compliance. These metrics enable stakeholders to gain insights into the progress of the project and make informed decisions.

3 Protect your data

The third step to reporting Scrum metrics is to protect your data from unauthorized access, disclosure, or modification. To ensure your data is secure, confidential, and trustworthy, you should use encryption to prevent unauthorized parties from reading or altering it. Authentication should be used to verify the identity and credentials of users or devices that access your data. Authorization should be used to define the roles and permissions of users or devices that access your data. Audit trails should be used to track and record the actions and events that occur on your data. Lastly, anonymization should be utilized to mask any personally identifiable information or sensitive information from your data. All of these measures can help prevent unauthorized parties from linking or exposing it.

4 Communicate your metrics effectively

The fourth step to reporting Scrum metrics is to effectively communicate them to your stakeholders. It's important to make sure your metrics are clear, concise, and consistent. Visualizations, such as charts, graphs, diagrams, or dashboards can be used to present the metrics in an easy-to-understand and compare way. Additionally, stories with narratives, anecdotes, or examples can be used to illustrate your metrics in a relatable and memorable way. Feedback loops with surveys, polls, interviews, or discussions can help collect feedback from stakeholders on the metrics and use it to improve reporting and the product. Transparency through honesty, openness, and accountability should be used when sharing metrics with stakeholders while explaining how they reflect team values and goals. While reporting Scrum metrics while maintaining confidentiality is challenging, these four steps can help measure and communicate progress without compromising security or privacy. Tools such as Jira, Trello, or Google Data Studio can support Scrum metrics and confidentiality. Ultimately, reporting Scrum metrics can help you and your stakeholders make better decisions, improve collaboration, and deliver value to customers.

5 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?