Agile Assessments
The word assessment by itself carries a lot of baggage and can cause anxiety. However, most of us know that assessment doesn’t have to be viewed in that way. It is a simple tool to provide understanding about where we are in terms of learning, so we can plan the next steps. If carefully conducted, it is a natural and meaningful learning experience.
After all, a good assessment has a role to play. The language that can be used is, it’s an audit, it’s a snapshot. We, of course, don’t run a business for the audit, we need more than a snapshot for that. We want a whole album to properly run a business. But the audit and the snapshot have a place in the larger picture.
Well prepared and conducted assessments do the following:
- Provide diagnostic feedback
- Help teams set standards
- Evaluate progress
- Motivate performance
Self-Assessments vs Guided Tests
Usually, a self-assessment brings more value than tests and guided audits. A self-assessment provides more awareness and openness since it starts from the team’s heart which denotes a real desire to change. Improvements achieved by this kind of approach last longer over time.
There are good online self-assessments available that teams can take advantage of to start an improvement journey:
On the other hand, self-assessments are more susceptible to misinterpretation. Some teams may form a better picture of themselves than they really are, and in some cases, it might lead to blind spots preventing the team from having a real picture of its current stage or problems.
Facilitated Agile Assessments
One approach to performing assessments that may benefit the team while avoiding blind spots and misinterpretations is to have a facilitator in place to help teams overcome these common pitfalls. The presence of a facilitator during the assessment may not only prevent the team to misunderstanding statements or concepts, but also ensures that the session starts and ends on time while flowing smoothly.
A facilitator can also ensure that during the session all team members give its contribution thereby increasing the chance of achieving a result that better represents the current stage of the team. There are also benefits of having a reliable facilitator aware of the team’s activities. Such facilitator is able to raise team’s awareness by challenging them about their practices and behavioral patterns, increasing the level of reality of the process.
Good Agile Assessments Lead to Good Agile Metrics
Suitable agile metrics can play two basic and different roles. The first is to track the progress of the team in becoming Agile and the second is to ensure the we become a learning organization.
As many of us know, metrics are very important mechanisms without which assessing any effort or endeavor would be susceptible to gut feeling and bias based interpretations. However, having poorly defined agile metrics is even worse than having no metrics at all, because it can get in the way, becoming a distraction preventing the team to focus on what really matters.
The following three general rules can help to avoid this trap:
- Don’t track the metrics that are not related to the entire team. Any metric that is meant to measure the individual must be avoided.
- Choose the metrics by its importance and not by how easy it is to measure. Usually, people tend to stick to the metrics provided by the out-of-the-box tools.
- Be aware of the context, not only the data. For example, velocity or number of bugs during a sprint maybe turns out to be nothing more than noise.
After having good agile metrics set up, the next step it to share within the company and keep track of it. Even in a team with high autonomy, sometimes the changes that are needed could be too deep so they eventually would need help from experts, managers or leadership to overcome it.
Remember that keeping track of good metrics and take actions towards the improvements is a team sport and requires frequent and meaningful assessments.
Good luck on your improvement journey!