At the core of all Agile approaches is the practice of inspection and adaptation. The same principles that work for software delivery can be applied to enterprise adoption of Agile practices, but it is easy for organizations to fall into a predictive, plan-driven approach to transforming their organizations. In plan-driven approaches, Agile adoption is a goal in itself that misses the real point: improving business results. Plan-driven approaches also fail to transform teams and cultures by under-cutting self-organization and accountability for results. Guiding Agile adoption by focusing on improving key measures enables teams and organizations to focus on areas where they need to improve, guiding them toward specific practices that can help them improve their results. This empowers teams, improves their ability to self-direct, and ultimately helps them to be accountable for results. This session will provide anyone involved in bringing Agile approaches to their organization with insights into how they can use continuous measurement to help their organization to improve, incrementally and continuously.

The key measures discussed are focused on the value the organization delivers (customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction, the product cost ratio, and revenue per employee), the time it takes the organization to deliver that value (cycle time, release stabilization time, and release frequency), and the ability for the organization to innovate (innovation rate, the installed version index, the usage index, and defects). The purpose of using these measures is to help organizations focus on where they would like to improve, and what specific practices can they use to improve each of the measures. The measures and related practices can be used at a product, line of business, or organizational level.