Hybrid Project Management

20Metrics for Adaptive Deliverables

Teams that work with adaptive deliverables focus on efficiency. The metrics they use track velocity, the time it takes to get a new feature developed, and estimates for the future rate of work.

In this chapter we'll look at how to use burn charts to estimate the amount of work a team can get done in an iteration, and we'll look at how to estimate a team's rate of work (velocity). Then we'll show how a cumulative flow diagram can identify bottlenecks in a process, show how long the team is working on new features, and indicate how long customers have to wait before their requests are fulfilled.

Agile projects often use measures to evaluate stakeholder satisfaction. We will look at how these measures can be used on any project and why they are definitely useful for hybrid projects.

ADAPTIVE MEASURES

Agile teams focus on increasing efficiency, throughput, and velocity. Noting that defects and rework take time to fix, they are also focusing on how to improve their work process to decrease defects. We'll describe four charts that are commonly used to plan and track progress for Agile deliverables, burndown charts, burnup charts, charts to estimate velocity, and a cumulative flow diagram.

FIGURE 20‐1 Burndown chart.

Burndown Charts

A burndown chart shows the work and an estimated completion rate. The team then tracks the actual work completed ...