Svetlana Mukhina: Metrics That Bring Value at I T.A.K.E. Unconference 2015

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Metrics That Bring Value

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Introduction
Svetlana Mukhina
ICAgile ICP, ICP-ATF, ICP-BVA, PSM I
Agile and Career Coach at Luxoft Agile Practice
Experience: 12+ years in IT, Project and department management,
Computer Linguistics, Technical Writing, Quality Assurance
Interests: Project management, Agile transformation, Career and
performance coaching, Psychology
Hobbies: Horse riding, music, poker, travelling
Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/svetlanamukhina

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What Metrics We Gather on Projects
ü Capacity – number of ideal hours available during next sprint
ü Velocity – number of story point completed during previous sprint
ü Requirements stability index – percentage of requirements changed in the current sprint
ü Burn-down chart – visual representation of story points burned to the given moment
ü We also log work time on daily basis

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Capacity
Capacity is a number of ideal hours available during next sprint
ü To understand how many hours we really can do the work, e.g. write code or do testing
Ø A usual developer don’t work more then 5h per day
ü To be able to distribute tasks effectively
Ø No sense to plan tasks for the ones on holiday
Ø No good to refine or investigate tasks by those who will not take part in the sprint development
ü To do precise planning
Ø We estimate sub-tasks in hours and during planning map it to capacity

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Ideal Hour and Load Factor
§ Read specification
§ Discuss specification with BA
§ Plan development activities
§ Develop DB
§ Develop server side
§ Develop UI
§ Check integration
§ Build
§ Development testing
§ Bug-fixing
§ Unit tests create
§ Unit tests running
§ Bug-fixing after unit tests run
§ Prepare test date
§ Run story test
§ Prepare and test deployment
procedures
§ Deployment on server
§ Merging
§ Jira task update
§ Sanity check
§ Bug-fixing after testing
§ Knowledge transfer and sharing
§ Mentoring and training
Included in ideal hour
Included in load factor

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Velocity
Velocity is a number of story points completed during previous sprint.
ü To track performance and see area of improvements on a team and individual basis;
ü To form Sprint scope basing on experience from previous Sprint;
ü To mitigate hard push from Product Owner/Manager when they would like to do extra in-scoping;
ü To see that we have technical debt on the project;
Ø Technical debt does not calculated into velocity, but time is spent on it
² Using velocity and capacity all together helps to align workload basing on the past experience and
future availability of development time, it make planning more accurate and results more expectable

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Velocity Visualization

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Requirements Stability Index
RSI is a percentage of requirements changed in the current sprint
ü To understand how much time was spent on re-work;
ü To show the re-work time to PO;
Ø It can be an argument to keep the sprint scope stable
Ø It can persuade PO to prepare requirements beforehand

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Work Log
ü To see what types of task are usually underestimated
Ø Bring it on Retro or lessons learned session
Ø In such a way one team has found out they always late with UI tasks
Ø A team got statistics that tasks that done via virtual machines takes 30% more time
Ø Other guys were able to present bottleneck in testing to the management
ü To get information on re-opened tasks and investigate the reasons
Ø One more team found out the necessity of sanity tests
ü To track personal performance
Ø Playing table tennis is not about writing code

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44
-15.5
0
23
-6.5
Hours
Underestimate (delta >= 10 h)
Overestimate (delta <= -10 h )
Perfect estimate
Small underestimate (0 <delta <10)
Small overestimate (-10 < delta < 0)
2
1
5
6
3
Count
Underestimate (delta >= 10 h)
Overestimate (delta <= -10 h )
Perfect estimate
Small underestimate (0 <delta <10)
Small overestimate (-10 < delta < 0)

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Burndown Chart
Burn-down is visual representation of story points burned to the given moment
ü To make forecasting about ability to deliver scope in time;
ü To see visually in-scoping and delays in order to be able to do de-scoping when it is necessary;
ü To focus on team, not individual work;
Ø Draw it as a team, be involved and take responsibility
ü To discover and remove impediments in time;

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Ideal team
ü Not over-committing
ü Finished on time
ü Estimated correctly
q No corrections is necessary
Great team
ü Completed work on time
ü Adapted a scope to complete the sprint
ü At the end can complete additional work
q Discuss the reasons of late progress in Sprint first half
q Consider the capacity on planning
By Dusan Kocurek, ScrumDesk

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By Dusan Kocurek, ScrumDesk
ü Complete commitment on time.
ü Adapted the scope or worked harder to complete
the sprint.
ü The team is self-reflecting
q Discuss change of plan immediately as they see
the progress is slowing down
q Move a low priority item from next sprint backlog or
to product backlog.
Typical team Let’s have a rest
ü Committed to less than they are able to complete
ü PO does not provide enough stories for the sprint.
ü Over-estimation of complexity
q Identify this problem earlier
q Ask the product owner to provide more work
q Continue with refined stories from the next

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ü Didn’t complete the commitment
ü Was late for the entire sprint
ü Didn’t adapt the sprint scope to appropriate level
q Move not completed or low priority stories to the
next sprint.
q Lower capacity of the next sprint
q Take corrective actions after a few days when
slower progress is observed.
Boom. It is too late
By Dusan Kocurek, ScrumDesk
Boom. Too early
ü Finished work sooner than expected
ü Didn’t work on additional stories even it had capacity
to do it.
ü Stories were overestimated
ü The velocity is estimated incorrectly
q Ensure additional refined stories are ready to add

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By Dusan Kocurek, ScrumDesk
ü Didn’t update progress accordingly
ü PO added the same amount of work that was already
completed
ü Didn’t able to predict the end of the sprint
q Explain why and how it is necessary to track the progress
q Stop the team after two or three days that shows a flat
progress line and should apply corrective actions
ü Non-functional team on many levels.
ü No coaching of the team
ü PO does not care about development progress
q Cancel the sprint
q Restart the team
q Train the team
Oh, management is coming! Do Your Duties

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ü Scope was not estimated
ü Sprint was started
q Arrange a planning meeting
q Estimate the user stories
q Create sprint backlog
q Start working on sprint backlog
By Dusan Kocurek, ScrumDesk
ü First sprint typically looks like that
ü Scope was added to backlog daily without progress recorded.
ü Tasks were re-estimated constantly during the sprint
q Reevaluate sprint backlog
q Facilitate reevaluation session
q Coach the team
Zero effort
Up to the sky
Bump on the road
ü Sprint is started incorrectly.
ü Scope was added after the sprint start.
q Restart the sprint, even within a shorter timeframe.
q Start sprints with planning session using metrics

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