9 key Agile metrics to track your team’s success

Agile teams operate under the goal of enhancing productivity, efficiency, and speed by working in incremental cycles. But how can Agile teams know whether their methods are actually creating impact? Agile metrics are crucial for Agile teams to track their progress, make informed data-based decisions, and effectively improve their processes.

In this article, we’ll discuss the importance of metrics for Agile teams, the different types of Agile metrics, and how to measure these metrics with a work management platform like monday dev. 

What are Agile metrics?

Simply put, Agile metrics or Agile KPIs are the measurements of an Agile team’s success. They’re the numbers that assess an Agile product’s development, progress, and areas for improvement. Different types of Agile teams will benefit from using a variety of metric types, but generally, they help teams quantitatively understand and measure the following aspects of the developmental process: 

• Delivery predictability
• Product quality
• Customer satisfaction 
• Workflow efficiency

3 types of Agile metrics

There are three categories of Agile metrics, each pertaining to the Agile style a team is using. These include: 

Kanban metrics:

Kanban focuses on visualizing a workflow to prioritize and organize tasks. So the metrics here measure aspects such as task completion and team workload. 

Scrum metrics: 

Scrum is all about organizing a workflow by breaking it up into iterative sprints. Scrum metrics focus on project speed and efficiency. 

Lean metrics: 

Lean works to improve value by reducing wasteful activities. These types of metrics run tests that pertain to productivity and team performance analysis. 

Why are Agile metrics important?

Metrics are inevitably important for any team and any project. Management consultant Peter Drucker said it best: “If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it.” For teams to track their success and progress, they need numbers and stats that indicate trends and other important information.    

But Agile teams take this one step further, as Agile’s entire foundation is rooted in the idea of continuous improvement. Agile teams must routinely review their processes to learn from them for better future decisions, and the most efficient way to gain actionable insights is from objective, quantifiable metrics. 

Some other benefits of Agile teams using metrics are:

• Transparently and visibility – by looking at metrics all stakeholders can get a snapshot of a project’s progress and gauge team efficiency and productivity, ensuring a cohesive environment where everyone is on the same page. 
•  Efficient project planning – metrics give insight into a team’s workload capacity and performance, making it easier to plan realistic sprints and workflow plans. 
• Enhanced productivity– by assessing performance and catching bottlenecks through metrics, teams can make necessary, evidence-backed changes to allow for a more productive workflow.   

9 types of agile metrics for development teams

1. Sprint burndown

One of the most common metrics used under the Scrum framework, this chart is used to visually measure a sprint’s progress — showing how much work has been completed, and what is still left to be completed. The Y-axis generally lists the story points (or the amount of effort in the sprint) while the X-axis shows the allotted time. It’s a great tool for teams to understand if sprints are on track to be completed in time.

monday dev is a powerful Agile development software that automatically creates burndown charts from your sprints, so teams can easily track and gain insights from this metric.  

2. Velocity

Velocity is another common Scrum metric, and measures the amount of work completed in each sprint. This metric is ideal for planning realistic sprints because it gives teams a reference of how much work they have been able to complete in past sprints. 

3. Lead time

This Kanban metric is the measure of the entire lifecycle of a task. It measures the amount of time a task takes from the moment it’s requested until it’s finished — from creation to completion. It provides valuable insights as to how long tasks take on average, and where holdups getting started might exist.

 4. Cycle time

Cycle time is a Kanban metric similar to lead time, but instead of measuring the entire time of a task’s existence, it measures only the active time it takes to complete a task once work has started. Cycle times should generally be half the time of a sprint, and if it’s not, then it’s a strong indicator of inefficiency and productivity issues.  

5. Throughput

Throughput is a Kanban productivity metric that measures how many tasks were completed in an allocated period. It can be looked at as the Kanban equivalent of velocity and is useful for understanding team capacity. 

6. Cumulative flow diagram

This Kanban metric visualizes the different steps of a project, showing the “to-do’s,” “In progress,” or “In backlog” statuses. It allows teams to visually understand where most tasks lie in the workflow, so they can then interpret if one section is overpopulated and leading to bottlenecks.

7. Work in Progress

This Kanban metric is true to its name and is the simple measurement of the number of tasks that are currently being worked on (started but not yet completed). It’s useful to make sure not too many tasks are being dealt with at once.  Many Agile teams have limits on the amount of items that can be a work in progress to ensure workflow isn’t delayed, and that resources are being efficiently spent. 

8. Defect density 

This metric refers to the amount of bugs (or defects) in specific lines of code, and is a good indicator of a product’s quality. This metric is similar to deployment frequency which measures how often code is deployed. By testing these specific aspects of the code quality, teams receive insight that can improve their quality assurance (QA) processes.  

9. Net Promoter Score (NPS)

This agile business metric measures customer satisfaction on a scale of 1-10, by simply asking customers to rate how satisfied they are with a product. It is a clear indication of whether a product is providing value to customers. 

How to choose agile metrics for your team

With so many Agile metrics to choose from, it can be challenging to decide which ones work best to measure success in your team. To simplify what metrics you may want to use it’s best to

make sure that your metrics align with your product roadmap and specific team goals.

After analyzing your project goals and aligning with stakeholders on their priorities, it’s a lot easier to decide which metrics will matter. For example, if your goal is speedy efficiency, then velocity and throughput may be important metrics to consider. But if your main goal is customer satisfaction, then you would want to consider a metric like Net Promoter Score (NPS).

It’s also important to consider your metrics based on what Agile practices and methodology your team uses, as the metrics for Scrum and Kanban teams are different. Lastly, you want to make sure that you’re considering a wide variety of metrics that can lead to varied types of insights. Metrics should work in conjunction with each other to tell a full story. 

Gain actionable insights from your Agile metrics with monday dev

Metrics are only as useful as the tool that allows you to track, measure, and visualize them. Here’s where monday dev comes in, the innovative product development software that allows teams to manage all aspects of product development in one unified space. With the following features, teams can customize real-time reports and efficiently track all their metrics in one place. 

Burndown charts

Automatically convert your sprints into a comprehensible burndown chart. Easily detect any potential problems or bottlenecks by tracking your sprint progress —  comparing the actual remaining effort with the ideal progress. Compile all this information and more about your sprints in an extensive report and gain a complete understanding of your team’s planning accuracy.

Kanban View 

Visualize your workflow with visual, colorful, customizable Kanban boards and gain full transparency into your team’s developmental tasks, status, and progress. 

Sprint management 

From sprint planning, daily standups, to retro and sprint review, manage the lifecycle of your sprints directly. By consolidating all relevant information about your sprints in one place, it’s easy  to then draw accurate metrics from them. 

Ensure your Agile team is working in the smartest way possible, putting their time and energy into initiatives that have the most impact. By tracking your metrics in a flexible, easy-to-use platform, drawing actionable insights to improve the way you work becomes second nature. Try it yourself with a free trial today.