Agile Metrics In Action

Summary Agile Metrics in Action is a rich resource for agile teams that aim to use metrics to objectively measure performance. You'll learn how to gather data that really counts, along with how to effectively analyze and act upon the results. Purchase of the print book includes a free eBook in PDF, Kindle, and ePub formats from Manning Publications. About the Book The iterative nature of agile development is perfect for experience-based, continuous improvement. Tracking systems, test and build tools, source control, continuous integration, and other built-in parts of a project lifecycle throw off a wealth of data you can use to improve your products, processes, and teams. The question is, how to do it? Agile Metrics in Action teaches you how. This practical book is a rich resource for an agile team that aims to use metrics to objectively measure performance. You'll learn how to gather the data that really count, along with how to effectively analyze and act upon the results. Along the way, you'll discover techniques all team members can use for better individual accountability and team performance. Practices in this book will work with any development process or tool stack. For code-based examples, this book uses Groovy, Grails, and MongoDB. What's Inside Use the data you generate every day from CI and Scrum Improve communication, productivity, transparency, and morale Objectively measure performance Make metrics a natural byproduct of your development process About the Author Christopher Davis has been a software engineer and team leader for over 15 years. He has led numerous teams to successful delivery using agile methodologies. Table of Contents PART 1 MEASURING AGILE TEAMS Measuring agile performance Observing a live project PART 2 COLLECTING AND ANALYZING YOUR TEAM'S DATA Trends and data from project-tracking systems Trends and data from source control Trends and data from CI and deployment servers Data from your production systems PART 3 APPLYING METRICS TO YOUR TEAMS, PROCESSES, AND SOFTWARE Working with the data you're collecting: the sum of the parts Measuring the technical quality of your software Publishing metrics Measuring your team against the agile principles

"When will it be done?" That is probably the first question your customers ask you once you start working on something for them. Think about how many times you have been asked that question. How many times have you ever actually been right? We can debate all we want whether this is a fair question to ask given the tremendous amount of uncertainty in knowledge work, but the truth of the matter is that our customers are going to inquire about completion time whether we like it or not. Which means we need to come up with an accurate way to answer them. The problem is that the forecasting tools that we currently utilize have made us ill-equipped to provide accurate answers to reasonable customer questions. Until now. Topics Include Why managing for flow is the best strategy for predictability-including an introduction to Little's Law and its implications for flow. A definition of the basic metrics of flow and how to properly visualize those metrics in analytics like Cumulative Flow Diagrams and Scatterplots. Why your process policies are the potentially the biggest reason that you are unpredictable.

Summary Kanban in Action is a down-to-earth, no-frills, get-to-know-the-ropes introduction to kanban. It's based on the real-world experience and observations from two kanban coaches who have introduced this process to dozens of teams. You'll learn the principles of why kanban works, as well as nitty-gritty details like how to use different color stickies on a kanban board to help you organize and track your work items. About the Book Too much work and too little time? If this is daily life for your team, you need kanban, a lean knowledge-management method designed to involve all team members in continuous improvement of your process. Kanban in Action is a practical introduction to kanban. Written by two kanban coaches who have taught the method to dozens of teams, the book covers techniques for planning and forecasting, establishing meaningful metrics, visualizing queues and bottlenecks, and constructing and using a kanban board. Written for all members of the development team, including leaders, coders, and business stakeholders. No experience with kanban is required. Purchase of the print book includes a free eBook in PDF, Kindle, and ePub formats from Manning Publications. What's Inside How to focus on work in process and finish faster Examples of successful implementations How team members can make informed decisions About the Authors Marcus Hammarberg is a kanban coach and software developer with experience in BDD, TDD, Specification by Example, Scrum, and XP. Joakim Sundén is an agile coach at Spotify who cofounded the first kanban user groups in Europe. Table of Contents PART 1 LEARNING KANBAN Team Kanbaneros gets startedPART 2 UNDERSTANDING KANBAN Kanban principles Visualizing your work Work items Work in process Limiting work in process Managing flow PART 3 ADVANCED KANBAN Classes of service Planning and estimating Process improvement Using metrics to guide improvements Kanban pitfalls Teaching kanban through games

Velocity is the most commonly used metric in agile software delivery. It is also perhaps the least effective metrics in agile software delivery. In "Escape Velocity", Doc Norton walks the reader through common issues with metrics and how to avoid them, altermative metrics that not only help agile teams perform better, but enable them to continuously improve, and techniques for forecasting that vastly outperform the use of velocity. In a quirky, casual, and information dense style, Doc Norton makes the topic of tracking data entertaining and shows us how to be more effective in the pursuit of excellent software.

Summary Software Development Metrics is a handbook for anyone who needs to track and guide software development and delivery at the team level, such as project managers and team leads. New development practices, including "agile" methodologies like Scrum, have redefined which measurements are most meaningful and under what conditions you can benefit from them. This practical book identifies key characteristics of organizational structure, process models, and development methods so that you can select the appropriate metrics for your team. It describes the uses, mechanics, and common abuses of a number of metrics that are useful for steering and for monitoring process improvement. The insights and techniques in this book are based entirely on field experience. Purchase of the print book includes a free eBook in PDF, Kindle, and ePub formats from Manning Publications. About the Book When driving a car, you are less likely to speed, run out of gas, or suffer engine failure because of the measurements the car reports to you about its condition. Development teams, too, are less likely to fail if they are measuring the parameters that matter to the success of their projects. This book shows you how. Software Development Metrics teaches you how to gather, analyze, and effectively use the metrics that define your organizational structure, process models, and development methods. The insights and examples in this book are based entirely on field experience. You'll learn practical techniques like building tools to track key metrics and developing data-based early warning systems. Along the way, you'll learn which metrics align with different development practices, including traditional and adaptive methods. No formal experience with developing or applying metrics is assumed. What's Inside Identify the most valuable metrics for your team and process Differentiate "improvement" from "change" Learn to interpret and apply the data you gather Common pitfalls and anti-patterns About the Author Dave Nicolette is an organizational transformation consultant, team coach, and trainer. Dave is active in the agile and lean software communities. Table of Contents Making metrics useful Metrics for steering Metrics for improvement Putting the metrics to work Planning predictability Reporting outward and upward

What do you want me to do? This question is the enduring management issue, a perennial problem that Stephen Bungay shows has an old solution that is counter-intuitive and yet common sense. The Art of Action is a thought-provoking and fresh look at how managers can turn planning into execution, and execution into results. Drawing on his experience as a consultant, senior manager and a highly respected military historian, Stephen Bungay takes a close look at the nineteenth-century Prussian Army, which built its agility on the initiative of its highly empowered junior officers, to show business leaders how they can build more effective, productive organizations. Based on a theoretical framework which has been tested in practice over 150 years, Bungay shows how the approach known as 'mission command' has been applied in businesses as diverse as pharmaceuticals and F1 racing today. The Art of Action is scholarly but engaging, rigorous but pragmatic, and shows how common sense can sometimes be surprising.

Agile Practice Guide – First Edition has been developed as a resource to understand, evaluate, and use agile and hybrid agile approaches. This practice guide provides guidance on when, where, and how to apply agile approaches and provides practical tools for practitioners and organizations wanting to increase agility. This practice guide is aligned with other PMI standards, including A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK® Guide) – Sixth Edition, and was developed as the result of collaboration between the Project Management Institute and the Agile Alliance.

An unstoppable business revolution is under way, and it is Agile. Sparking dramatic improvements in quality, innovation, and speed-to-market, the Agile movement has helped companies learn to connect everyone and everything…all the time. With rapidly evolving consumer needs and technology that is being updated quicker than ever before, businesses are recognizing how essential it is to adapt quickly. The Agile movement enables a team, unit, or enterprise to nimbly acclimate and upgrade products and services to meet these constantly changing needs. Filled with examples from every sector, The Age of Agile helps you: Master the three laws of Agile Management (team, customer, network) Embrace the new mindset Overcome constraints Employ meaningful metrics Make the entire organization Agile Companies don’t need to be born Agile. With the groundbreaking formulas laid out in The Age of Agile, even global giants can learn to act entrepreneurially. Your company’s future may depend on it!

Understand how to continuously organize people, skills and resources to meet changing business needs and forecast for future workforce supply and demand.

With the award-winning book Agile Software Development: Principles, Patterns, and Practices, Robert C. Martin helped bring Agile principles to tens of thousands of Java and C++ programmers. Now .NET programmers have a definitive guide to agile methods with this completely updated volume from Robert C. Martin and Micah Martin, Agile Principles, Patterns, and Practices in C#. This book presents a series of case studies illustrating the fundamentals of Agile development and Agile design, and moves quickly from UML models to real C# code. The introductory chapters lay out the basics of the agile movement, while the later chapters show proven techniques in action. The book includes many source code examples that are also available for download from the authors’ Web site. Readers will come away from this book understanding Agile principles, and the fourteen practices of Extreme Programming Spiking, splitting, velocity, and planning iterations and releases Test-driven development, test-first design, and acceptance testing Refactoring with unit testing Pair programming Agile design and design smells The five types of UML diagrams and how to use them effectively Object-oriented package design and design patterns How to put all of it together for a real-world project Whether you are a C# programmer or a Visual Basic or Java programmer learning C#, a software development manager, or a business analyst, Agile Principles, Patterns, and Practices in C# is the first book you should read to understand agile software and how it applies to programming in the .NET Framework.