1. Software delivery metrics – key watch-outs

There was a long period in Agile software delivery where ‘metrics’ were a dirty word – advocates of Agile successfully argued that:

• software delivery ‘is more of a people-centric art than a science’
• top-down measurement is intrinsically bad
• metrics will be gamed
• metrics are resented by engineers …

so don’t even think about introducing metrics across the Agile delivery process!

All these arguments have merit, but after twenty-odd years of attempting to implement Agile across organisations, a shared view has grown that some form of measurement to underpin a culture of continuous improvement is vital.