Title: An innovative measurement programme for agile governance

Authors: Aroun Poligadu; Raj Kishen Moloo

Addresses: Global Operations, Express ICS, TNT, 4th Floor, Wing B, Cybertower 1, Cybercity, Ebene, Mauritius ' Department of Computer Science, Faculty of Engineering, University of Mauritius, Phase 2 Building, Reduit, Mauritius

Abstract: Lack of governance is common in agile organisations. It is very hard to introduce good measurement and metrics programme in agile teams as resistance is usually high since people think agile is too much documentation. Constant evolution and adaptation is required in agile environment. This study proposes a measurement framework based on industry best practices while innovating on the way the programme is designed and institutionalised. The programme ran for at least 20 weeks on four projects. A number of field analysis were done on different attributes of the software and the software process. Data about the process, the product and resource was collected and analysed. Implementation of the Agile Measure Programme was very fast. A project took three weeks to start getting the first result. Data monitoring took about two weeks to set up. The programme could be ported to other projects in minutes. Improvements in the development lifecycle were noticeable in some cases moving from a UCL/LCL of 3 to 1σ. Team productivity has increased by more than 30%. Decision making was made easier for management. Perceived situations were now based on data, providing less intuitive thinking.

Keywords: agile governance; metrics; measurements; agile organisations; organisational agility; agile teams; best practice; development lifecycle; team productivity; decision making.

DOI: 10.1504/IJASM.2014.059153

International Journal of Agile Systems and Management, 2014 Vol.7 No.1, pp.26 - 60

Received: 04 Nov 2012
Accepted: 08 Jul 2013
Published online: 30 Jun 2014 *

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