Agile Suggestions (S1E#5) - Transparency & Progress Tracking

The empirical way of working is about closing the loop: planning to do something, doing it, gathering insights about what you've done and adjusting the plan for the future iteration. "Gathering insights" can be easily translated in deep-diving the agile principle of "Working software is the primary measure of progress": Why is it (not) working, what was holding you back, what stood in your way, what were you stalling on, what went smoothly? People often know already. But let us be honest, we all make our own reality rather then standing in the truth. Besides the very valuable subjective perspective, we also need an objective one. Imagine your gut feeling telling you that it is terrible, but the objective data is proving you that you did well. Wouldn't you be interested to understand why your own perception is different from the objective data presented to you? 

"Working software is the primary measure of progress"

What does progress actually mean? According to the Oxford Learner's Dictionary it is stated as:

• (1) the process of improving or developing, or of getting nearer to achieving or completing, something;

• (2) movement forward or toward a place.

And since we focus on "Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software", we can more easily investigate whether that delivered working software, actually is valuable for the customer. Did we actually get nearer to achieving or completing something valuable? Measure this by simply closing the loop and asking for feedback. The sooner something valuable is delivered, the quicker constructive feedback can be taken into account to actually deliver something a customer really will use. 

The scope of that valuable something you wanted to get nearer to .. define it and deliver it

Within the context of an empirical (science) method, you define a small enough scope of an experiment. Knowing and understanding what the scope is, gives you the opportunity to measure against that scope. The progressive insights derived from every experiment gets you closer to the expected result of the hypothesis or something completely different than expected. Putting this back in perspective of an Agile way of working: every iteration delivers a possible high quality and value solution for the customer. Living up to the commitment every iteration provides the predictability that something valuable might come the customer's way.  Flow is lovely, right?

Progress Monitors Matter

Progress monitors aim to assure transparency about the status and progress of the product about any artifact created by the agile solution team. Some typical progress monitors are: 

• the task-board or kanban-board (on team level) 

• the burndown chart (on team level)

• the release burndown graph (on product level)

• the lead and cycle times and cumulative flow (on team level)

Scared of transparency? 

Nobody likes to be controlled. But the question is actually whether you like to be surprised?
Progress monitors keep you focused and drive conversations that are valuable to get the most valuable work done in relation to committed goal. In the true spirit of running experiments, use the data in your advantage to have the conversations that matter. 

#notaponycamp