Agile KPIs?
What KPIs make sense in agile environments? The linked article takes a clear stand: it’s a rant against the “measurability myth”, and the only metric that matters in the end is customer satisfaction (which is hard to measure, but NPS helps to a degree).
The opening statement boldly claims that KPIs and agile just don’t mix well. Take velocity based on story points: it’s not a performance metric, because it measures sheer output. The problem with story points is that they’re not measurable quantities, but qualitative ones that even vary in their meaning across teams.
Real KPIs measure outcomes instead, i.e., observable effects of the outcome on the customer.
The article mentions several non-KPIs that are still somewhat worthwhile in agile environments, such as the number of tests written before coding, number of times per week talked to a customer, or team stability and satisfaction. (Elsewhere, I had previously suggested a metric that measures the ratio of things finished over things started.) These can be worthwhile, if only to introspect on the ways of working.
Tags: work