Topic

How to ensure the agile team’s progress is measures by the delivery of working solutions - an Agile Principle

Response

The principle is:

The delivery of WORKING SOLUTIONS is our primary measure of progress.

The progress of an Agile teams is no longer measured by the completion of activities on their project plan, but on the value created by working features that have been approved by the customer.

Measuring the progress of traditional projects is achieved through analysing the completion of individual tasks. This approach leads to a lot of work in progress and defers the activity of obtaining customer approval. Agile led projects measure their progress by analysing the completion on individual features, which have been approved by the customer.

Constantly monitoring progress and being prepared to make changes based on customer feedback and other unforeseen external or internal factors ensures the the final deliverable is suitable. Agile ways of working ensure the team is continually focused on redefining the objectives, rather than the project being the process.

Determining whether the objectives are being met calls for the creation of a series of incremental deliverables, each building on from the next. With several increments representing a piece of value, the team can validate the suitability of not just the deliverable, but their analysis, design, construction, testing and release capabilities. This holistic approach ensures important components are not overlooked, instead they can be demonstrated or passed to the customer for validation.

Agile teams define their goals and monitor their progress through a combination of features are user stories.

Features describe small individual units of value, which ideally can be completed in isolation.
Features are formed from the small units of effort, which are referred to as User stories. User story completion is scheduled, monitored and measured over the course of a few days or within an iteration.

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