Most of the current agile assessment models -- both at the team and the enterprise level -- are practice-based assessments. These are basically questionnaires that an Agile expert, usually the coach, answers on behalf of an organization or client.
Standard questions touch upon the most well-known Agile practices -- daily standups, demos, time-boxing, rapid feedback loop. Most of the assessments are simply quantitative, although a few do delve into the qualitative, most often using …show more content…
For example, is the scale of 1-5 for standups counting the number of standups or measuring if the standups are truly team-owned or if they are status reports for management? Is there a standard weighting percentage of quantitative versus qualitative?
So an effective practice-based assessment tells you how you're doing Agile.
But, as we all know, there is a gulf between doing Agile and being Agile, which is where an organization truly derives the seemingly-magical benefits of Agile, transformation and ownership and innovation.
So how do we measure being Agile? Or is it a question of I'll know an Agile organization when I experience it? Are we chasing the Agile version of the purple unicorn?
I've certainly felt like Goldilocks at various times in my personal Agile journey. This organization is not doing product ownership properly. This organization is losing value in the release process. And in one way or another, they were flawed in their execution of one or more Agile practices.
But they were Agile to one degree or another. And they were a vast improvement -- in delivery, productivity, value and satisfaction -- than my previous non-Agile work