Chapter 12
Agile Team Measurements

For years, project teams and project managers have tried to predict where the project was headed. Unfortunately, when teams don’t release value on a frequent basis, it’s quite difficult to tell where in the project the team is.

Agile approaches provide a team the chance to measure what it has finished and what’s in progress, not what it anticipates doing. That means teams can directly measure their work and use that empirical data to predict a little farther ahead. If teams don’t like what the data says, they can change something and see if that works better.

Consider two different approaches to agile team measurements: team-based measurements and project-based measurements. Teams can measure their work and work in progress to learn about their approach to the product and their process. In addition, there are project-based reporting measurements. See Chapter 14, ​Report Your Project State​, for reporting measures.

This chapter is about team-based project measures. These measures help a team see progress with respect to its planned and actual work, its WIP, and the effect defects have on the team’s progress.