Top metrics to measure scrum and kanban teams productivity

There are several ways and different approaches to understand whether your scrum and kanban teams are productive and efficient. Diffefferent companies use different metrics to measure productivity of their scrum teams. While defining the right metrics for your organization is the first step it is also very important to also define KPI for each one of them and also track them over time to ensure improvements in these areas,

It is also very important to expose these trends, make them available and visible for the teams also bring them into the teams attention during the sprints retrospective or on any other regular cadence

Here are the 7 top metrics we recommend you to track over time:

1. Sprint Velocity: Measure the amount of work a team completes during a sprint. It’s calculated by adding up the estimated effort required for each completed user story or task. Sprint velocity is the basic but very useful metric because it provides insight into how much work a team can handle during a sprint, which can help with sprint planning and backlog management.Over time you should expect slightly increase in sprint velocity but more important is to check how this metrics has changed when adding new people to the team.
2. Cycle Time: This is the time it takes for a work item (e.g. user story, task) to move from the backlog to delivery. It’s a measure of the efficiency of the team and very powerful when it comes to kanban teams
3. Quality Metrics: These metrics track the quality of the work delivered by the team. For example, the number of bugs found and fixed during the development cycle, the amount of code rework required, etc. These metrics are important because they provide insight into the team’s attention to detail and the overall quality of their work.
4. Sprint Goal Achievement (actual vs planned): This metric compares what the team planned to deliver during a sprint to what was actually delivered. It’s a measure of the team’s ability to deliver on their commitments and provides insight into how well they are executing against their sprint goals.It is also measure the amount of context switches within the team which known as a productivity killer
5. Customer Satisfaction: This metric captures feedback from customers on the value delivered by the team. It’s important because it provides a measure of how well the team is meeting the needs of their stakeholders and delivering value to their customers. The why to measure it is by measuring the number of issues found by customers once the feature is out
6. Team Satisfaction: This metric captures feedback from team members on their level of engagement and motivation. A happy and motivated team is likely to be more productive, so it’s important to measure and track team satisfaction. This is usually done by running a short survey among the teams right after the sprint ends
7. Lead Time: This is the time it takes from the moment a request is made to the moment the team starts progress on it. Lead time is a measure of the responsiveness of the team and provides insight into how quickly they are able to deliver value to customers.

These metrics should be used in combination to get a comprehensive view of team productivity. As mentioned above it’s important to regularly track and analyze these metrics to identify trends and areas for improvement.

As always, if more info or help are needed feel free to reach out at info@ngoconsulting.co