Many agile assessments typically focus on singular aspects of a team without fully being able to encompass all areas and needs of the team. The Elements of Agile assessment, on the other hand, has been a fantastic tool to use for not only assessing where the team is at but also providing recommendations on what to look for and improve on. If you haven’t seen the 1st blog post of the Elements of Agile assessment series, here’s the link to get more context on what the assessment is and how to begin using it.
I was extremely impressed after receiving the results of the Elements of Agile assessment. Each element was well-defined, and the assessment went further by providing potential symptoms and solutions for each. Even though my particular use case was only focused on two red (not doing well) elements, it was still very useful to go through each element to get a deeper understanding of what they are and how they are integral to the team’s success. When I took a deeper dive into two foundational elements that were red for my team, Awareness, and Overlapping Work, I found the symptoms were right on.
For Awareness, I learned the symptom that presented itself most on our team was that team members did not understand how to perform their roles. For Overlapping Work, I clearly saw the team not owning the work together and instead dividing tasks into stages, such as “dev work” or “testing”. Though I could add on a few more symptoms that weren’t mentioned, such as “a misunderstanding of what it means to be agile” for Awareness, the symptoms displayed in the assessment were very accurate and thought-provoking, which can be seen below.
After reviewing the symptoms to watch for, I turned to the recommended solutions and chose a couple to start with based on the symptoms and my observations of the team. I chose “Setting up training” for Awareness and “Working on smaller items” for Overlapping Work. I first reviewed the initial state of the team to determine where the solutions would be successful and then began experimenting. After about 6 months addressing these symptoms, the team saw these improvements:
- For Awareness - Team agreements were created and covered
- Team roles and responsibilities defined
- Work Intake and Prioritization process established
- Workflow practice standards documented
During three workshops, we clarified what agile meant to us, how we take in and prioritize new work, and how to collaborate between team members depending on their roles. In total, we had 7-8 takeaways in different areas that helped with alignment and established more effective team processes. Although there aren’t as many quantitative measurements yet, qualitatively I’ve had team members recognize and mention that elaborating on processes and how the team works together has been very helpful.
- For Overlapping work – Began splitting stories and refining work as smaller efforts
- Went from 15 items to 30 items in a release cycle
- More visibility to what was being worked on, less WIP, and more focus
- Refined stories per sprint went from 30% to 90%
- Less conversations on what the work is and more focus on the effort itself
- Stories pulled into sprint after planning went from 50% to 20%
- Splitting stories allowed us to more accurately predict how much work we could complete so that we could plan more effectively
- Went from 15 items to 30 items in a release cycle
The improvements shown in each of these areas above were great! In addition, since the team was reassessed, it showed the Awareness and Overlapping Work elements to be yellow instead of red, further reinforcing improvement within the team.
Overall, experimenting and using Mountain Goat’s Elements of Agile assessment has not only been useful for establishing a framework around assessing and improving my team, but it has also given me insight into what to look for when working with different teams in the future.
For those who plan to give it a try or have already taken the assessment, let me know what you think, as it’d be great to hear how others have been utilizing it. And a huge thank you to Mike and Mountain Goat Software for creating this extremely useful tool. I’m excited to use it for upcoming clients and be able to coach teams in more effective and valuable ways!
Here’s a link to Mike Cohn’s blog where he goes over the assessment and provides it for teams to use.