Agile Metrics in Action

by Christopher W.H. Davis

The iterative nature of agile development is perfect for experience-based, continuous improvement. Tracking systems, test and build tools, source control, continuous integration, and other built-in parts of a project lifecycle throw off a wealth of data you can use to improve your products, processes, and teams. The question is, how to do it?

Agile Metrics in Action teaches you how. This practical book is a rich resource for an agile team that aims to use metrics to objectively measure performance. You'll learn how to gather the data that really count, along with how to effectively analyze and act upon the results. Along the way, you'll discover techniques all team members can use for better individual accountability and team performance.

Practices in this book will work with any development process or tool stack. For code-based examples, this book uses Groovy, Grails, and MongoDB.

Genres: Programming, Management, Nonfiction, Technical, Productivity, Business, Software

272 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 2015

Reviews

[Christophe Addinquy · Rating 1 out of 5]

A clear disappointment, this is what the book is to me. I can tell you that. I was expecting something about how to assess the agile values, mindset or practices into qualitatives or quantitative measures. Instead I have a writing about a framework developed by the author to measure and control (yes !) the development cycle. Even the mindset behind this is questionnable about being agile.
ma note de lecture en français ici

[André Gomes · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good advice for agile teams on how to effectively use metrics to on process optimization and improvement.

[Nilendu Misra · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good book for Software Leaders who are empirical-analytical, or want to improve their chops on that dimension. It nicely segments metrics into functional categories, identifies key sources-metrics-dashboard in each, and - most importantly - walks through the dreadful "corner cases" (e.g., 100% build pass rate may mean (a) no test exists and/or (b) no test is actually running!).

The categories are -
1) Project tracking system (e.g., Jira/ velocity, cycle time, CFD etc.)
2) Source Control (e.g., Git / PR to comment to commit ratio)
3) CI system (e.g., Jenkins/Weather report, build pass rate etc)
4) Production (e.g., NewRelic/Apdex, Health dashboard etc)

[Mikhail Filatov · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's not clear what is the focus of the book - in most cases it's about engineering process metrics (velocity, etc.) but the author adds performance monitoring - which is about product itself. And he goes back and forth from one to another.
Also case studies are very artificial "the team saw their velocity dropped and found it's due to refactoring"- being an agile team they should have anticipated it well before looking at the metrics.
In a couple of places, when the case study becomes not so simple (e.g., the team decreased delivery time and found that quality was hit - due to shortening of beta program time) it's interesting.

[asvrvs · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great introductory into the world of Agile management and metrics. It can be helpful for all team-members, regardless of their role in the team - of course, first and foremost for team managers, but also for developers and executives. And if you just have started adopting Agile approach, this book can serve you as a decent starter.

[Michal Paszkiewicz · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book presents many methods and metrics you can use to monitor a project or product and gives examples that show how the metrics can be used to improve your work process. However, I think I preferred Manning's "software development metrics" which was more detailed.

I highly recommend this book to managers at all levels.

[Zach · Rating 3 out of 5]

Definitely interesting to read thinking of how Agile Metrics can be utilized within our organization. It's definitely a book for people who seriously want to nerd out on numbers. It just was not very applicable to our team at the very moment. He does write some small contradictory comments that oppose basic Scrum and Agile principles such as using hours to estimate instead of Story Points.

[Ricardo Hernández · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very comprehensive guide on how collect agile metrics and to define action items based on the data and insights. This is a practical guide that offers clear direction on how to build a pyramid of data for your operations from your project tracking system to application monitoring, along with source control systems and CICD pipeline.

[Gregory Reshetniak · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good read. Nothing particularly groundbreaking - record as much data as you can, normalize it, observe entire SDLC to see how your teams are doing - but a good read nontheless. Inspired me to try a couple new things here and there.

[Thomas Cooper · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fundamental in the application of agile as a methodology for delivering software projects. Waterfall methods propose to have a benefit of metrics for progress and so leadership is used to if not dependent on metrics.
Give them metrics.

[Amanda · Rating 3 out of 5]

I thought this book was pretty good and had a lot of useful examples. Some of the technologies suggested seem a little dated now, but the ideas behind them are not and overall this was a book I would recommend.

[Ed Schaefer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some useful ideas scattered throughout, but not the first or last book I would recommend on agile metrics. Well likely reference this book a little while using the work of Troy Magennis and Dan Vacanti, among others, as my primary sources.

[Jeff Patterson · Rating 4 out of 5]

The material was interesting. There were many good ideas that I needed to figure out how to get to work in Azure DevOps. I am a C# developer using MS Azure DevOps; the book used Java and Atlassian products.

[Jennifer · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was a decent introduction to tools to quantify team productivity using agile processes, but credibility was lost when affect and effect were used incorrectly.

[Igor · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you are looking into practical insights on how to measure Agile practices progress and take action when needed this is the book to read. I thoroughly enjoyed the whole book and will keep it as reference during day to day work.