Metrics, Management & Mindset

• How are metrics handled in your organization?
• How is your organization culture designed to interact with metrics?
• How fearless is your management when it comes to adapt new behaviors?

Metrics are symptoms of positive or negative performance, signify strengths or opportunity areas for teams which when looked into and improved upon can bear fruits in the long run. It is the same metrics when looked at in isolation will paint an incomplete picture using factual symptoms but not supported by qualitative analysis of where those numbers came from or what behaviors caused such numbers. I have been part of agile teams, agile release trains, domains calling themselves trains, Kanban systems where teams would work on scrum boards with varying philosophies but almost every time management is interested in the numbers and then why are the numbers bad. Only a handful ask the question “What behaviors did your teams employ to get the upward trend that we see?” Or “Can you share with us the behaviors as a result of your root cause analysis that caused the downward trend in your numbers?”

First driver of the metrics in any organization is the culture of that organization. Leadership group is responsible for such environment where good behaviors are encouraged, reinforced and counter productive behaviors and personalities are coached to where they either decide to play ball or call time on their association with the organization because the change management wants them to be part of is not within their work style. When a product owner is a habitual laggard in terms of being prepared for backlog refinement sessions, writing most bulk of user stories in team refinement sessions as opposed to writing them ahead of time and then refining them with the team then there is a problem. When development managers consistently approach team members to add work to sprint backlog instead of coming to product owners to ensure work intake stays as simple a process as possible then Houston has a problem. When all this goes unnoticed and is not dealt with in a timely manner by management then there is one message that gets trickled down the ranks: Management only cares about bottom line. When bad behavior is ignored, it becomes culture and toxic culture can sink the organizational Titanic faster than any quarterly numbers drop (which is the inevitable reality of such organizations).

One way to identify metrics is to understand the goals those metrics are tied to. If any organization has quantitative goals and against those, it has key performance indicators (KPIs) then it will make more sense to everyone in the organization for what all this work is being done for. We can go a step further by introducing Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) within the same organization for where KPIs identify how performance of a team or team of teams will be measured, OKRs are the North Star that guides the organization in terms of its journey to achieve excellence. Let’s consider the example of Team A which is measured on sprint over sprint velocity in addition to percentage of story points completed vs. committed. These are the KPIs on team level which everyone knows and understands for the most part. If we are to take this step further, we establish OKRs for the same team. which should come from the agile team (dev. Team, scrum master and product owner all involved) as Product Owner being the guardian and driver of product driving that conversation keeping in mind incremental relentless improvement.

One objective can be:

• Reduce carryover work in PI3 compared to PI2 by half

Once we have this objective, it is time to translate this objective into key results (KR). Some of the key results for PI3 in this example can be:

1. Reduce sprint over sprint story carry over during PI3 by 20%
2. Cut down number of defects for PI3 by 10%
3. Reduce the number of eight pointers stories in PI3 by 75%
4. Create 80% of stories for PI3 epics before PI Planning finishes

This process of defining our team objectives and subsequent OKRs should (I typed will and then realized that many organizations do not do this so changed it to should) result in inspection and improvement of our behaviors. One can utilize Problem solving workshop to identify symptoms and working our way back to define the real problem before we go through the solution steps. Solution will always be one or set of behaviors that the team identifies that will enable the team to meet the key results thus achieving the objectives set forth before embarking upon the PI3 journey. A few examples of behaviors that can lead to long term improvement can be:

• Documentation of preliminary analysis of new user story committed
• Application of dependency management process on story or epic level
• Using Jira ticket number to start subject line for any email going out for escalation email
• Use of sub-tasks like Analysis or code review to get a standard behavior going in the team
• Breaking down of stories based on pieces of work involved in the story

There is no shortage of behaviors that teams can employ to achieve quantitative reflection. The key is to be persistent for any change brought about in overall process will be hard in the beginning and will only bear fruits in the long run.

Management’s obsession with numbers is understood at many levels to be a way of showing interest in the progress which most often happens without being witness to empirical evidence.? While numbers tell a story, it is most often an incomplete one. To understand the magic and sense behind those numbers, management members need to do what is called the Gemba Walk and go to where the magic is for only then they will find the real problem as opposed to symptoms that get filtered up in different reporting sessions. One best practice for leaders to employ is to listen to the complete answer before asking another question for the perception of “why did you ask this question if you will not let me finish?” Will undermine any well placed intention of finding out root causes. Gemba Walk is not for leaders to impress upon their team members their presence, but it is about how willing those leaders are to listen to the open ended concerns and situations at work that they can impact by just being active listeners.

Metrics alone will never help any organization unless we use the key of behaviors to unlock the why and how of the very point that the organization or team is at. It is job of the management to first pick the right people to get the job done, who know how to get it done and then providing them with unconditional support to execute the plans that have been discussed and agreed upon. This is where fearless leadership is required by management if they are to see a change in direction of quantitive trend for every successful long term change comes after a short term period if downward trend as behaviors are set in motion to impact such change.