January 20, 2025
Agile Metrics that Matter
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Anyone who has worked on a software project knows that the direction you think you’re going in at the beginning is not always the one you end up taking. Budgets change, priorities shift, customer demands intervene, and deadlines loom, requiring plenty of adjustments and quick decision making. Agile development teams are built not just to withstand these changes, but to harness them for the most efficient delivery of value in a software project. Let’s take a look at a few of the different ways they do this.
The “Minimum Viable Product” Mentality
Many agile projects are initially built around a minimum viable product, which is the simplest version of a product that can be taken to market to achieve a stated goal. Agile teams work with product owners to trim the fat from product backlogs and prioritize getting working software into the hands of customers as quickly as possible. This typically takes the form of incremental delivery, where functionality is built out in layers over time.
To illustrate, consider a product needing a login screen: the core functionality needed on this screen is the ability for users to log into the system. Bells and whistles (such as fancy graphics, advanced contact options, etc.) can come later after the core functionality has been satisfied and users are able to access the system.
This strategy keeps teams nimble. As the demands of the project shift over time, agile development teams are less burdened by work done in a direction the product may no longer be taking.
Right Butts, Right Seats
The fifth principle behind the Agile Manifesto (https://www.agilealliance.org/agile101/12-principles-behind-the-agile-manifesto) is to “build projects around motivated individuals.” You can ultimately translate this to “right butts, right seats.” Agile teams are composed of people who embrace the opportunity that change brings. Here’s how a few scenarios play out with a highly motivated team:
- A project budget gets cut by 20%
- Agile team engages with product owner to determine highest-value backlog items to keep and lowest-value items to cut
- A customer does a complete 180 with the direction they want to take a feature
- Agile teams work with customer and product owner to map out a path to incremental delivery of the changes requested, getting key slices of the new feature delivered incrementally
- Stakeholders need to see a working product sooner than initially expected
- Agile teams are already prioritizing working software and incremental delivery and can rally around getting elements of features ready for a demo
Welcoming Change
Lastly, the second principle of agile development is to “welcome changing requirements, even late in development. Agile processes harness change for the customer’s competitive advantage.” This informs the agile mindset of responding to change by leaning in instead of pushing back. Agile development teams see change as an opportunity to get one step closer to the “right” product. “You said to build it that way, so that’s what we did and we aren’t changing it” is not the kind of attitude you can expect from an agile team. Instead, the agile team would seek to understand the “why” behind the change and find the smartest, quickest way to act in service of it.
We’ve seen agile teams go through innumerable changes on projects, harnessing these shifts as opportunities to get products increasingly fine-tuned to customer demands.
Got a dynamic product idea you’d like some feedback on? Reach out for a whiteboard session; we’d love to chat.
