Key Points

• Effective Scrum projects need proven metrics to succeed.
• Diverse toolsets enable teams to work effectively on projects while gathering salient data points.
• Understanding which metrics to gather gives keener insights as to how your projects are progressing.

Developing solid metrics and a good toolchain is instrumental for the success of any Scrum project. If you’re just flying by the seat of your pants, you’re likely not maximizing the potential of both your team and the outputs of a given project. Success in Scrum is about delivering value, not so much about the new features added or whatever else is out of scope.

So, let’s look at a little more closely at some of the top tools in use by Scrum teams, alongside what metrics you’ll want to develop to coincide with these tools.

Tools in Scrum Projects

Project Management

For most projects you’ll come across, you’ll want to run a project management software suite of some sort. These are vital for keeping track of who is working on which task, and for giving a bird’s eye view of the progress on things like current sprints, future milestones, and so forth. Visualizing progress can be a powerful means of motivation for some teams, while also cluing senior management into just how far along a project might be.

Collaboration and Communication

Things are a little different in the workplace these days compared to how it went 20 years ago. Having the means to remotely collaborate and communicate is vital for continued success in Scrum projects. As such, leveraging the power of something like Google Workspace alongside Slack or Teams is going to give you just about everything you need in terms of remote access to current workflows.

Whiteboards

Virtual and physical whiteboards alike are a vital part of the Scrum process, allowing teams to visualize workflow, promote accountability, and communicate during standup meetings. If you’re in a remote capacity, then virtual whiteboards fit the bill just fine. However, it is important to make use of these handy tools to get a real, tangible sense of just where your Scrum projects are heading.

Analytics

Data is the bedrock of any modern business, and the same holds true for modern Scrum projects. Utilizing powerful analytics suites like Tableau or even just leveraging the likes of Microsoft Excel can do wonders for getting a handle on some of the harder data points. You essentially want a way to sanitize and ultimately present the data in a visually pleasing and easily legible manner.

Surveys

Alongside Agile, Scrum puts people first, and one of the best ways to get a good grip on how Scrum projects are performing is by incorporating customer or testing surveys. This invites users to give qualitative feedback, which can be instrumental in developing or eliminating present defects.

Developing Metrics for Scrum Projects

Velocity

One of the most important metrics you’ll develop through the course of any Scrum project is going to be velocity. Rather than acting as a means of measuring speed, velocity in Scrum refers to the amount of work done by a team throughout a single sprint. This aids in determining the work capacity of a given team while also allowing team leads to plan for future sprints.

Sprint Burndown Charts

There are no end of useful charts in Scrum projects, and you’ll want to pay attention to Sprint Burndown Charts. These simply show just how much work is left on a Sprint. Depending on the items in your Scrum backlog, this is another superb way of getting hard data points on team capacity and capability.

Release Burndown Charts

One of the better higher-level tools available to Scrum projects is the Release Burndown charts. This essentially allows a bird’s eye view of current progress. These essentially show how much work is remaining on a project over multiple sprints, giving a fairly good read on how much further your team has to go before the deliverable is completed.

Cycle and Lead Times

We’ve discussed cycle and lead times alike a few times on iSixSigma, so I won’t touch down on the definitions themselves. However, these are fantastic metrics to track before you will be wanting to take a closer look at where you can improve certain workflows and improve overall efficiency.

Throughput

Throughput is best defined in Scrum projects as the items finished within a given period. This can be defined over the course of an entire project, or even across individual sprints. Throughput in the case of Scrum is similar in scope to velocity, but can look at more complex items on the backlog.

Defect Density

With Scrum being primarily used in software development, this can cover the bugs and errors found in the code itself. However, understanding just how many defects are present is a standard practice for many manufacturing disciplines. In Scrum projects, keeping track of defect density is an ideal way of understanding the quality and efficacy of current workflow practices with downward trends in the data being preferred.

Other Useful Tools and Concepts

Looking for something else to go with your morning coffee? You might want to take a closer look at the role leadership plays in BPR initiatives. BPR efforts can be drastic changes, and you’ll want strong leaders on board to champion the cause and lead the way through such a sudden shift.

Additionally, you might not know about the 10 most common challenges seen in BPR implementation. BPR itself is such a drastic practice that there are bound to be some hangups, and knowing how to mitigate these with some practical strategies is an invaluable tool when setting forth on your next process reengineering efforts.

Conclusion

Scrum projects succeed based on the quality of the work done by the teams conducting the sprints. However, having good metrics and solid tools makes doing that work much easier. Sure, you can keep track of these things with the likes of physical Kanban boards. However, leveraging technology gives ample opportunities to get the work done effectively.

The image featured at the top of this post is ©Ground Picture/Shutterstock.com.