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Happy New Year! At this time of New Year's resolutions, it's common to see IT teams also starting their years with plans to improve work on their software projects. We always see the headlines about project failures and disasters; fewer companies want to risk giving away secrets by divulging details on their successes. At the end of the day, it's all about delivering value to the business. Yet only a small number of IT organizations have begun to think about their projects in this way.
In this issue of the Agile Journal, we look at different approaches to measuring business value and success. How do you know if you are improving? What is it that you should measure? Agile experts have begun implementing some new metrics, alongside traditional project management and development reporting approaches. Ross Pettit starts by examining what business value really means, and how an IT organization can approach measurement from this perspective. Todd Olson offers an approach to determining project success and progress using a finely-grained measure known as Active Time. Tamara Sulaiman has developed AgileEVM, a twist on traditional Earned Value Management applied to Agile projects. And Kirk Knoernschild proposes using Running Tested Features to best monitor a project's progress. These are just a few ways in which Agile teams can best communicate their success and the value that they can deliver.
Agile metrics and business value is an important topic, and one that we'll revisit during the year. And we're always looking for new ideas. Is there a theme or topic that you'd like to see us focus on for an upcoming issue? Would you like to contribute an article on this or another upcoming topic? If so, go to the "Letters to the Editor" in the forum at AgileJournal.com and send us your ideas.
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Editor in Chief
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Agile Projects Must Measure Business Value
How do you know if an Agile project has succeeded? The typical response I get to that question is a blank stare or moment of silence, depending on whether the meeting is in person or by phone. And if I do get an answer, it's usually accompanied by a "we're just starting" comment. The challenge is twofold: development organizations are notoriously weak in collecting metrics and reporting on their projects and, when using Agile processes, many teams are challenged to demonstrate if the change from traditional approaches was worth it. As IT costs and business pressures escalate, it is critical that a development shop can demonstrate its value to the business. Proponents claim that Agile processes help do this, but they must back up those claims with numbers.
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Business Value Applied: Aligning The Day To Day With Business Imperative
In an effort to justify IT investments, we have increasingly looked to quantify the "business value" of projects. While there is merit in doing this, in practice it can generate more heat than light. There is a limit to the accuracy with which we can predict the future, how much data we can collect, and the extent to which business decisions can be expressed as mathematical formulas. The result is that "business value" is neither ubiquitous language for IT projects nor an absolute measure of IT effectiveness. Still, there is value in business value: properly applied, it provides guidance for project decisions and is another mechanism through which IT aligns with business objectives.
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Keep Moving With Running Tested Features
A prime directive of agile development is to maintain forward progress. In past articles, I've talked about metrics that gauge the quality of code and design. While these metrics help guide refactoring efforts that ensure application maintenance remains easy, they don't necessarily allow us to measure our progress in terms that make sense to the business customer. A good way to measure forward progress is to know where the development effort stands in relation to the functional features desired by business stakeholders. Running Tested Features (RTF) is a way to track progress by measuring how many features pass acceptance tests. In this article, I'll introduce RTF and present some tools that can be adopted to implement an RTF strategy.
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 | Blending Agility With Finely-Grained Tracking
Agile methodologies enable teams and organizations to support the dynamic nature of business. Short, focused iterations are ideal for accommodating changing requirements and environments. Planning and tracking is low overhead using units like features, stories, or tasks providing high-level visibility into status. While this visibility is better than nothing, there are certainly limits in the depth and breadth of insights this provides. This article will investigate techniques for blending more finely-grained tracking with conventional agile techniques.
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 | AgileEVM – Earned Value Management The Agile Way
As an Agile team member, are you trying to figure out where you are, exactly, in the bigger picture of product development compared to where you are expected to be? Are you are working on a government contract where Earned Value Management (EVM) implementation is mandatory, but would like to use Agile software development methods? Perhaps you're an Agile project manager often "translating" Agile iteration results for non-Agile stakeholders? As a product manager, would you like to be able to forecast the impacts of changes on your expected return on investment? Let me introduce you to Agile Earned Value Management (AgileEVM).
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 | FEATURED BOOK: Agility and Discipline Made Easy: Practices from OpenUP and RUP
by Per Kroll and Bruce MacIsaac
Agility and Discipline Made Easy is all about how to mindfully tailor and adapt RUP/OpenUP to achieve Agility within the real-world constraints of many large organizations and more formal process cultures. In short: I really liked the book and I really disliked the title. For so many of us living in large or corporate environments trying to figure out how to successfully adapt and scale "Agile" for our organizations, this book is exactly what the doctor ordered!
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Latest Issues of Agile Journal
Coming Up - Editorial Calendar
- August 13 - Quality Agile Development
- September 10 - Agile News
- October 08 - Valuable Agile Practices
- November 12 - Introducing Agile to the Organization
- December 10 - The State of the Agile Community
See the full 2008 Editorial Calendar >
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