Doc Norton's Blog

So there we were, at an agile conference. Well, not at the conference exactly. But at a bar very near to an agile conference.

A few patrons were talking agile stuff - like they do. And someone, as evidence in support of their stance that all metrics are evil, used the “But the Scrum Guide”, defense.

“But the Scrum Guide doesn’t prescribe any metrics. As a matter of fact, the word metric is not in the Scrum Guide. Not once.”

I found this claim dubious, so I checked it out.

It is true, the word metric...

In a prior post, we talked about why we should manage WIP. We showed that we can use a future value calculation to give us an idea of how long it will take to complete multiple items.

While our future value calculation is both informative and interesting, it is not particularly useful beyond making the point that doing more at once takes more time. What we want to know is how does this materially impact our ability to make software. For that, we can look to a more simple (and useful)...

Having too much Work in Process, also known as Work in Progress (WIP), is a remarkably common issue. In my experience, management often encourages this behavior. I don’t know if it is the notion that we will get more done if we work on more things simultaneously. Or perhaps there is a fear we won’t get enough things done unless we work on several of them at once.

But what happens when we try to work on a few stories each? Remarkably, we make progress on several, but complete precious few. The...

This blog post is inspired by another Quora question; “What metrics do you use to track Agile Efficiency?”

To begin with, I want to state that if I had to choose between efficient and effective, I’d choose effective. Efficiency is often about output (how many widgets per hour), whereas Effectiveness is often about outcome (was the purpose consistently met).

Agility is about responding to change. Efficiency is achieved by driving out variation. An over-focus on efficiency will lead down a path...

Now, metrics are not bad. But, they are often used in bad ways.

It might help to be aware of some of the side effects of mismanagement of metrics. From inadvertently creating behaviors that actively work against our best interest, to altering the meaning of the metric, mismanagement can do more harm than good.

Charles Goodhart is an economist and former advisor to the Bank of England. In 1975, Goodhart delivered two papers to a conference at the Reserve Bank of Australia. In...

Now, metics are not bad. But, they are often used in bad ways.

It might help to be aware of some of the side effects of mismanagement of metrics. From inadvertently creating behaviors that actively work against our best interest, to altering the meaning of the metric, mismanagement can do more harm than good.

Western Electric had commissioned an extensive study that ran from 1924 to 1932 at their Hawthorne Works in Cicero, IL. The intent of the study was to determine the...

In a previous article, we looked at Velocity as a lagging indicator of a complex system. Here, we are going to think about velocity by way of analogy. There is something we all have in common that is also a lagging indicator of a complex system - our body weight.

Our body weight is a lagging indicator of a complex system. There are inputs and outputs and there are multiple factors that impact the system overall. From our diet and exercise to genetics and even our social network, there are...

A vector is an entity that has both magnitude (size) and direction. Velocity indicates the speed of something in a particular direction.

In physics, velocity is the rate at which an object changes its position. An object that oscillates at a high speed, but always returns to its starting position has a zero velocity.

Velocity is the rate at which a team delivers value to the customer. A team that completes lots of tasks, but delivers no value to the customer should have a...

Recently, on a private forum, a member posted a query about their team’s recent drop in Velocity. Concerned about how their boss would respond, this individual wanted to know how to troubleshoot velocity issues.

After spending over an hour crafting a response, I decided I would also add it to my public blogs in case there are others who have similar questions about velocity.

Velocity cannot tell you much about what transpired over the course of an iteration, except...

When leadership asks for an increase in velocity, there are a few common behaviors that occur. Each of them are an attempt to satisfy the potentially unrealistic ask.

It is intriguing to me how often a manager will make a change such as this to a system of work and then later proclaim that the team is gaming the system. This is simply not the case. In fact, the gaming of the system is the improper application of targets or goals for lagging indicators. The rest is just natural consequence.

The...