How to Measure Agile Maturity
When I coach, consult and teach classes, I often get questions about creating an agile maturity tool or defining agile maturity metrics. Agile Maturity metrics are used by many businesses to better understand their present agile practices and monitor to improve them. I understand the need for this kind of metric. I also noticed that the purpose and value of agile maturity metrics are misunderstood. This article will help you to find agile maturity metrics that bring value and offers a free maturity tool to download.
Agile comes at a price
Going agile costs money. At a first glance, it makes sense that we want to know what the return on investment is and with that, what the cost and possible cost reduction of going agile is and it seems sensible to monitor our progress.
ROI implies that we spend money (cost) and expect some kind of value in return. In fact, the cost part is not so interesting and also complex to measure. As Taiichi Ohno once said: “Costs do not exist to be calculated. Costs exist to be reduced”. His reasoning is that calculating the cost for a certain initiative or department is a waste. Remember that an organisation is a complex system. It is an over-simplification to think we can easily allocate or calculate cost versus revenue pre-, and post-agile. Reality is messy: People will need time to learn, people will…
