Setting Goals For Improvement – Leading vs. Lagging

Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
Pinterest
WhatsApp

Many organizations are becoming agile to improve quality, throughput, or many other good things that agile brings along. It thus seems trivial that if we want to measure our improvement we will measure these. However, this raises a difficulty and we need to look at it.

Let’s say we want to improve quality. We decide to use the Scrum framework. The scrum framework talks about sprints, sprint goals, daily scrum, and many other things, yet it doesn’t directly discuss quality. There is a leap of faith here: we believe that if we will use the scrum framework, quality will improve.

Quality, throughput, agility, and others are what we call Lagging indicators. They will change as a result of the things we do. We do not affect them directly. If my boss wants me to have a higher quality I cannot just do that, I need to do things like testing, refactoring, reviewing, etc., and then the quality will improve.

So what should we measure?

We should look for leading indicators. Indicators that we can directly impact by the things we do. For example, do we do code reviews? What is our test coverage? how long does it take for our tests to run? how many items of the sprint’s backlog were done by more than one person? How many people from the organization show confidence in the bi-monthly goals (if too low, let’s adapt it)?

Once we identify our leading indicators (according to the practices we want to focus on) we can have direct and tangible measurements. Our belief is that once we near our leading indicators goals, the lagging indicators will follow.

If this is interesting I strongly recommend reading Jesper Boeg’s Level Up Book which talks exactly about this (and how to do it).

Subscribe for Email Updates:

Categories:

Tags:

Perfection Game
Lean and Agile Principles and Practices
Scrum.org
Agile Techniques
Nexus
Effective Agile Retrospectives
Nexus Integration Team
Agile and DevOps Journey
Entrepreneurial Operating System®
Agile India
Reading List
Agile Mindset
Kanban Game
AgileSparks
speed at scale
BDD
Lean and Agile Techniques
ScrumMaster Tales
Sprint Retrospectives
RTE Role
Agile Marketing
Portfolio for Jira
Operational Value Stream
Professional Scrum with Kanban
Kanban Basics
Pomodoro Technique
Agile Exercises
AI Artificial Intelligence
agileisrael
Agile Delivery
Webinar
Limiting Work in Progress
Planning
ARTs
predictability
Agile Testing Practices
Large Scale Scrum
Agile Community
Agile Basics
Scaled Agile Framework
Elastic Leadership
Lean Agile
Continuous Delivery
AI
Agile Contracts Best Practices
lean agile change management
Hybrid Work
RSA
Implementing SAFe
Enterprise DevOps
Nexus and SAFe
Test Driven Development
Product Management
Sprint Iteration
Business Agility
PI Planning
Agile in the Enterprise
Scrum Values
POPM
System Team
Risk-aware Product Development
Story Slicing
Advanced Roadmaps
Accelerate Value Delivery At Scale
QA
Agile Project
An Appreciative Retrospective
Release Train Engineer
Kaizen Workshop
ATDD
Built-In Quality
Agile Risk Management
Legacy Code
Lean Agile Organization
Lean-Agile Budgeting
Software Development
Covid19
Rapid RTC
Professional Scrum Master
Applying Agile Methodology
Releases Using Lean
Lean Agile Leadership
Video
TDD
Agile Israel
Scrum Master Role
Frameworks
Jira Cloud
ROI
RTE
Achieve Business Agility
Managing Projects
Systems Thinking
A Kanban System for Software Engineering
Principles of Lean-Agile Leadership
Kaizen
LPM
Atlaassian
Agile Product Ownership
Development Value Streams
SAFe
Agile Program
Manage Budget Creation
Risk Management in Kanban
Continuous Deployment
ATDD vs. BDD
Tips
Lean-Agile Software Development
DevOps
Professional Scrum Product Owner
NIT
What Is Kanban
SAFe Release Planning
LeSS
Scrum and XP
Atlassian
speed @ scale
System Integration Environments
Continuous Integration
Risk Management on Agile Projects
Scrum Guide
Games and Exercises
Agile for Embedded Systems
IT Operations
Process Improvement
Lean Startup
Program Increment
Introduction to Test Driven Development
Tools
The Kanban Method
System Archetypes
Agile Development
Certification
Self-organization
Coaching Agile Teams
Agile Games
Slides
Lean Software Development
Managing Risk on Agile Projects
PI Objectives
Agile Product Development
LAB
Scrum Primer
ART Success
Continuous Planning
Agility
Value Streams
Agile Assembly Architecture
Nexus and Kanban
Agile Release Management
EOS®
WIP
Presentation
ALM Tools
Jira Plans
Lean Budgeting
SA
Code
Kanban
Quality Assurance
Jira admin
SPC
Sprint Planning
Lean Risk Management
Acceptance Test-Driven Development
Amdocs
Daily Scrum
Scrum Master
GanttBan
Scrum
Implementation of Lean and Agile
Scrum With Kanban
Agile
Kanban Kickstart Example
Agile Games and Exercises
Agile Israel Events
Introduction to ATDD
Kanban 101
Legacy Enterprise
Lean Agile Basics
Spotify
Agile Project Management
The Agile Coach
Jira
Software Development Estimation
Continuous Improvement
Engineering Practices
Iterative Incremental Development
Agile Outsourcing
SAFe DevOps
Change Management
Certified SAFe
Nexus vs SAFe
Agile Release Planning
Product Ownership
Artificial Intelligence
AgileSparks
Logo
Enable registration in settings - general

Contact Us

Request for additional information and prices

AgileSparks Newsletter

Subscribe to our newsletter, and stay updated on the latest Agile news and events

This website uses Cookies to provide a better experience
Shopping cart