The content on this page has been gathered from a free EBM training course delivered by Agile for Humans (Evidence-Based Management – Free EBM Training Course )
Here is the white paper from Scrum.org. (Evidence-Based Management™ (EBM) )
These are some related recordings from a meetup I attended:
4 Mistakes We Make with Goals (and How to Fix Them) with Stephanie Ockerman Just. Build. It. with Wilbert Seele
How do you measure agility?
One way is through Evidence-Based Management (EBM)
What is EBM?
- It’s none prescriptive. You measure based on your needs.
- It allows for empiricism. It creates transparency.
- It allows you to steer governance in a complex environment.
- A framework that can be used for a variety of use cases to measure against goals.
- Come up with a hypothesis to inform what to measure.
There are three components:
GOALS
Our goals should determine what evidence we need to collect. If we don’t have goals how do we know what to measure?
| Type of Goal | Description |
|---|---|
| Strategic | (a vision that you have)Big and far away – aspirational – a lighthouse – this is where we want to goIdeally, impact or outcome orientated Specific and Measurable |
| Intermediate | A step towards a strategic goal – it’s achievable but still a little uncertain Long term objectiveNot a plan – it’s a goal Is time-boundThis could be a product goal…. |
| Immediate Tactical | Critical near term objectives that work towards intermediate goalsLow uncertainty This could be a sprint goal…. |
EVIDENCE
This is the ‘stuff’ we will look at… when you think about a hypothesis you’ll need to know what is the proof? The evidence you need will depend on your goals.
There are 4 KVAs (Key Value Areas)
(also for the jargon buster KVM = Key Value Metric)
- Unrealised Value (Identifying the satisfaction gap)
- What value are we not delivering?
- What customers are we not reaching?
- What markets are we not reaching?
- Undelivered Features
- Measuring allows us to ask additional questions
- What can we pursue?
- Current Value (view of the present)
- What kind of value do we deliver right now….?
- Allows you to make decisions in the moment.
- Is what we are doing valuable?
- How happy are our customers? Squads? Business Stakeholders?
- Validation of what we have delivered
- Time to Market (T2M)
- How quickly can we react to what is happening around us?
- How fast can we learn/adapt/deliver?
- How frequently are we releasing?
- How quickly can we react?
- Flow metrics
- Ability to Innovate (A2I) – keeps us honest
- What are we getting to market?
- Bugs/ are we piling up defects?
- Tech debt/keeping the lights on vs value added releases
- What is our ability to deliver new value?
- What is the ability of our customers to benefit?
- Personal development
- Context Switching
EMPIRICISM
Inspect, adapt, make transparent
- Setting goals and gathering evidence will influence everything.
- Transparency is your friend – showing the why and the lessons learnt/celebrating the wins can be very empowering to teams
Changing Measurements
- Measure what is relevant, what you want to measure will vary depending on your goals – evidence will inform goals – it is fine to change
- Spending time and money measuring what isn’t important doesn’t make sense
- Behavioural influence – measuring the wrong ‘thing’ could lead to behaviours that aren’t desired
Changing Goals
Based on EBM you might find that one of your goals is not worth pursuing
- You should be asking some questions frequently:
- Is this goal a step towards the intermediate goal?
- What has it taught us about the intermediate goal?
- What has it taught us about the strategic goal?
How to get started? Build from the inside out….
- What are we measuring now… what KVMs are we currently measuring and do they slot into KVAs?
- Are there too many goals/ too few?
- Are there any gaps?
- Ask good questions
- Do we have strategic, intermediate or tactical goals already set up and can we see the link between them and what we are measuring?
- This can allow for targeted conversations – what is important – what do you want to focus on?
- Jargon can be off-putting
- Is there a greenfield opportunity to try this out?
- Start small – iterate