Being Agile: Eleven Breakthrough Techniques to Keep You from “Waterfalling Backward”

Metrics

An easy way to validate whether you are accumulating project debt in terms of defect backlogs is to track how many open defects there are at the end of every iteration. If the team is working closely together on small user stories, defects may be found throughout the iteration, but the number that remain open should trend toward zero by the end of the iteration. A handful of defects—at most—should remain if the team is completing stories and counting them as “Done!” Ideally, teams should strive to get to zero known defects but, as many teams experience, defects may be discovered during live demos of the code at the end of an iteration. The goal, however, still remains: Stay as close to zero known defects on your backlog as possible at ...