FINALLY!!! “Agile Maturity Calculator” Has Arrived


Finally!!! – The magic formula to calculate AGILE MATURITY  LEVEL has arrived!  All we have to do, is to plug vanity metrics that we can easily collect throughout our organization – and the job is done: agility is measured!

Unfortunately, NOT…So many companies tirelessly chase *measurable outcomes*, OKRs, KPIs, by collecting what is easy to collect, not what carries true value.   This requires a heavy investment in complex tools, registries and collections to support processes (indicators of local success), behind which, inevitably, stand armies of locally optimized (by roles & responsibilities) managers that are happy to remain busy and slowly go through motions of a typical *agile transformation*, to meet some personal and near-term organizational goals (usually, involves tens of thousands of people, as one, broad and shallow “big bang”).

The above gives an illusion and false sense of predictability/accuracy to executive management: “hey, we seem to have it under control now” and our millions of dollars are well spent.

Of course, the above is just an illusion.  It is like a navigation board of an airplane that is disconnected from the rest of the plane: lots of fake data.

Are there better ways to measure adaptiveness (a.k.a. agility)? For sure.  But they will require a much more systemic (deeper and more narrow effort.  Most likely, not as many people would have to be involved and instead of chasing hundreds of, easily collectable but irrelevant, data points, we would be looking at a small list of things that really matter (they may not be as easy to collect though).

For example:

  • Definition of Done (is it inclusive or limited?)
  • Transaction Costs (is it low or high?)
  • Switching Costs (is it low or high?)
  • Lead & Cycle Time (are they long? how long is delta?)

…And of course, the above must be de-coupled from “levels of maturity”, “year-end goals”, individual monetary incentives and other system-gaming, box-checking exercises.

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