Agile Metrics & Reporting Flashcards
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Read the first 7 Agile Metrics & Reporting flashcards as text
In Disciplined Agile, 'leading metrics' are preferred over 'lagging metrics' because they:
Answer: Provide early signals that allow teams to course-correct before outcomes are locked in
Leading metrics (e.g., WIP, queue depth) signal future performance, enabling proactive adjustments rather than after-the-fact analysis.
A DA coach discovers the team tracks 12 different metrics but acts on none of them. The root cause is most likely:
Answer: Metrics are not connected to improvement goals or decisions
Metrics that don't inform decisions are noise; DA coaching should help teams identify the vital few metrics tied directly to their improvement objectives.
Which metric most directly helps a DA team identify whether they are over-utilizing specialists and creating bottlenecks?
Answer: Individual utilization rate per skill type
Tracking utilization per skill type reveals where specialists are overloaded, causing queues that slow overall flow.
In DA, the 'improvement kata' is best supported by which type of metrics review cadence?
Answer: Frequent short-cycle review of targeted metrics aligned to current challenge
The improvement kata requires rapid PDCA cycles with frequent metric checks to confirm whether experiments are moving the team toward the target condition.
When using Earned Value Management (EVM) in a DA hybrid context, 'Earned Value' represents:
Answer: Budgeted value of work actually completed
Earned Value equals the budgeted cost of work actually performed, giving a value-based view of progress independent of spend.
A DA coach observes that a team's 'happiness metric' is high but customer satisfaction is declining. This pattern most likely indicates:
Answer: Internal team metrics are decoupled from external value delivery metrics
When team happiness and customer satisfaction diverge, it signals the team is optimizing internally while missing what customers actually value.
Which DA principle directly supports the practice of limiting the number of metrics a team tracks at any one time?
Answer: Pragmatism—be practical, choosing working strategies over popular or theoretical ones
DA's pragmatism principle guides teams to focus on what actually works, including keeping metrics sets small enough to act upon rather than comprehensive but unused.