At AgilityHealth®, we believe healthy, high-performing teams are the most mature. Healthy teams are those that are sized appropriately with skilled team members who understand their roles and what is expected of them. These teams are able to self-organize around the work and members are T-shaped, which enables each to contribute to the work. 

High-performing teams take these items even further and work together to find creative and innovative solutions while breaking the work down into smaller increments of value they then deliver on schedule. Improving team maturity takes time and it begins with measurement.

There are numerous ways to measure the success of Agile teams within an organization. Some companies rely on metrics tied to the team’s performance, such as how many story points are completed over a sprint or how few escaped defects the team’s work creates. Another way to gauge the success of a team is by looking at their churn rate, or the stability of the team. Still another measure is often focused on feedback from the team’s leadership and internal or external customers.

For organizations implementing or that are already using Agile, assessments focused on asking the right questions provide insights that indicate what is going on within teams, product lines, portfolios or throughout the enterprise, whether team members are in the office or distributed. Agile assessments create transparency for leaders by identifying obstacles to remove and opportunities to grow. As a result, teams can reach their highest potential and organizations thrive in their Agile transformation journey.

At AgilityHealth®, our team has always believed there’s a correlation for teams between qualitative metrics (defined by maturity) and quantitative metrics (defined by performance or flow). A few years ago, we adjusted our Agile team assessments to gather both qualitative and quantitative data. Once we felt we had a sufficient amount to explore, we partnered with the University of Nebraska’s Center for Applied Psychological Services to review the data through our AgilityHealth platform. The main question we wanted to answer was: What are the top competencies driving teams to higher performance?

One of our large financial services clients needed immediate help. The company was struggling to meet customer demands and industry regulations and needed to align business priorities to capacity before it was outplayed by competitors. They thought the answer would be to invest in Agile practices. But so far, that strategy didn’t seem to be paying off.

Measuring the health and performance of just one team to gauge their maturity and help them grow requires many resources including establishing a method of measurement, time for the team to complete the assessment, someone to help the team analyze the results and establish a growth plan to move forward, and much more. Multiplying those efforts across all teams in an organization can seem daunting. But does it have to be? 

Oftentimes, in order to move forward, people follow the ‘out with the old, in with the new’ train of thought. A focus on continuous improvement can certainly follow that pattern. But at AgilityHealth^®, we’ve learned that even though there’s a need for new developments, there’s frequently no reason to throw out the old when you can simply make a few improvements instead! With that in mind, we are thrilled to announce new AgilityHealth Radars to help further your transformation journey, as well as enhancements to some of our favorite radars and Growth Portals. Many of these new developments stemmed from feedback and ideas received from current customers. Here’s what we’ve done with those continuous improvement suggestions!  

Over the last few years, organizations have needed to make a shift from reacting in a disorganized manner when something unexpected happens to proactively addressing or responding to disruptions quickly and effectively. This approach has helped organizations to rapidly recover, thrive, and move forward, thus improving their business agility. 

 Travis Klinker, Target

At the EBA Summit this past September, Travis shared that starting an agile journey was not easy and they certainly had to practice patience. When starting Agile at Target not everyone was ready for the change. With a larger organization, it’s hard to change the mindset. The video recording of Travis’s presentation and slides can be found here.