The Agile Transformation and Its Metrics

Is it pos-si-ble to mea-sure agili-ty? And if so, how and with what? Orga-ni-za-tions that have been oper-at-ing very suc-cess-ful-ly in a plan-dri-ven man-ner for many years and are there-fore used to think-ing in terms of met-rics will raise these ques-tions soon-er rather than lat-er in their jour-ney towards more agili-ty. Unwa-ver-ing is the belief in the dog-ma that you can only man-age what you can mea-sure. But is this dog-ma actu-al-ly true? And is it some-how use-ful and applic-a-ble to agile trans-for-ma-tion?

It is wrong to sup-pose that if you can’t mea-sure it, you can’t man-age it — a cost-ly myth.

W. Edwards Dem-ing, The New Eco-nom-ics, p. 35

As orig-i-na-tors of this dog-ma either W. Edwards Dem-ing or Peter F. Druck-er are named. But nei-ther Dem-ing nor Druck-er ever said so. On the con-trary, both were well aware of the lim-its of mea-sur-a-bil-i-ty, espe-cial-ly when it comes to peo-ple and lead-er-ship.

Of course it would be desir-able to be able to con-trol an orga-ni-za-tion or a change project with GPS accu-ra-cy: Deter-mine posi-tion, act, deter-mine changed posi-tion and thus decide direc-tion and progress. Where that is pos-si-ble, one should of course do exact-ly that. In the vast major-i-ty of cas-es, how-ev-er, this will not be pos-si-ble or at least not eas-i-ly and direct-ly. Nev-er-the-less some-how deci-sions and actions have to be tak-en.

Not every-thing that counts can be count-ed, and not every-thing that can be count-ed counts.

Albert Ein-stein

For a long time, I was firm-ly con-vinced that mea-sur-ing agili-ty and man-ag-ing agile trans-for-ma-tion with met-rics leads direct-ly into car-go cult hell. What real-ly counts, the effec-tive-ness, val-ue ori-en-ta-tion, adapt-abil-i-ty, resilience, cus-tomer sat-is-fac-tion or employ-ee sat-is-fac-tion, is quite dif-fi-cult to mea-sure.

On the oth-er hand, there are of course things that can be eas-i-ly observed and mea-sured, the col-or-ful sticky notes, the back-logs, the sto-ry points and the veloc-i-ty of the teams, filled agile roles and com-plet-ed train-ings and much more. But all of this is not the essence of agili-ty, but rather phe-nom-e-na that can be observed in agile orga-ni-za-tions. These forms arise from the essence, but the essence can-not be forced by imi-tat-ing the form.

If we start mea-sur-ing and reward-ing these phe-nom-e-na in cor-po-rate cul-tures with-out suf-fi-cient psy-cho-log-i-cal safe-ty, but with all kinds of indi-vid-ual per-for-mance incen-tives linked to met-rics, the result will nec-es-sar-i-ly remain a shal-low car-go cult. These were my argu-ments so far.

In ret-ro-spect, how-ev-er, I now con-sid-er it one of my biggest mis-takes to have always more or less cat-e-gor-i-cal-ly reject-ed the mea-sure-ment of agili-ty and met-rics for the agile trans-for-ma-tion. Although I still see the dan-ger of an explo-sion of car-go cult, I would con-scious-ly take the risk today or lim-it it by very care-ful selec-tion of the met-rics.

Soon-er or lat-er, in every trans-for-ma-tion, there comes a time when the ques-tion is raised very force-ful-ly as to what all this is for and brings about. And the only lan-guage in which an answer to this ques-tion will be under-stood and accept-ed is the lan-guage of met-rics. Espe-cial-ly when the eco-nom-ic sit-u-a-tion of the com-pa-ny has wors-ened since the begin-ning of the trans-for-ma-tion, the basic mood towards the trans-for-ma-tion is per-haps threat-en-ing to tilt, or even when key pro-tag-o-nists have left the com-pa-ny mean-while.

You have to beat the sys-tem you actu-al-ly want to over-come with its own weapons, oth-er-wise the sys-tem will even-tu-al-ly strike back relent-less-ly.

Originally published at https://fuehrung-erfahren.de on October 19, 2020.