Learn Scrum Performance Metrics (CSM) with Interactive Flashcards

Master key concepts in Scrum Performance Metrics through our interactive flashcard system. Click on each card to reveal detailed explanations and enhance your understanding.

Velocity Chart

Velocity is a metric that predicts how much work an Agile Scrum team can successfully complete within a two-week sprint period based on past performance. The velocity chart shows the sum of estimates of the work delivered across iterations. This aids in understanding the team's efficiency and capacity. Furthermore, it assists in estimating the work that the team can handle in future sprints, thus aiding in release planning and scheduling.

Cumulative Flow Diagram (CFD)

The Cumulative Flow Diagram is a visual tool in Scrum, which shows the progress of work items in different states. It demonstrates how work is moving through a system and enables teams to manage their development process by visualizing work in progress, completion, and bottlenecks. CFD provides the team with a clear indication of its performance and can be used to predict future performance.

Control Chart

Control Charts are used to study how a process changes over time. They are powerful tools for detecting whether a process is behaving consistently or whether it has problems. For scrum teams, the control chart measures the cycle time of your product workflow. The X-axis represents the time it takes for an issue to go from ‘in progress’ to ‘done’, and the Y-axis shows when each task was completed. This allows teams to identify patterns, find out if changes to the process are improving product delivery, and predict future performance.

Lead Time

Lead Time in the Scrum context refers to the complete journey a piece of work undertakes from the time it enters the system until it is finished. This includes time during which work awaits prioritization, is in progress or under review. It is a vital performance metric as it helps the team understand how long it takes for work to be completed after being initialized, aiding in more realistic future planning.

Burnup Charts

Burnup charts demonstrate the amount of work completed in a project over time. Unlike burndown charts, which show remaining work, burnup charts focus on showing completed work. This metric can reveal a project's progress and can help predict when the project will be completed based upon the work accomplished. These charts are valuable tools to understand if a team is on target to hit their sprint goals. They also provide a clear picture of the work that has been done compared to the total scope of the work, providing critical insight for scrum masters and project stakeholders.

Sprint Burndown Chart

Sprint Burndown Charts show the amount of work remaining in a sprint. These charts are updated daily and they visually depict the work left to be done versus the remaining time in the sprint. Sprint Burndown Charts help in early identification of any potential risks or roadblocks, allowing Scrum Masters to address these issues promptly. By comparing actual progress to ideal progress, you can make accurate predictions and manage your team's workload to ensure timely completion of the sprint objectives.

Product Burndown Chart

Product Burndown Chart represents the total remaining work to be done to reach the product goal. It is a long-term, release-level metric. Each time a product increment is released, the remaining necessary work is re-estimated and the chart is updated. This allows for monitoring progress across multiple sprints, and provides insight into how changes to scope or velocity affects the product timeline. It's an effective way for Scrum Masters to track long term project progress and forecast completion dates.

Defect Density

Defect Density is the number of defects confirmed for a certain size of the software deliverables (for example, per lines of code, per person-hour, or functional points). Low defect density signifies high product quality, while high defect density may indicate potential problems in product quality. Regularly tracking and addressing defect density can increase the quality of deliverables, improve team's productivity, and minimize technical debt.

Cycle Time

Cycle Time refers to the time it takes for a project, feature, or user story to move from start to finish through the team’s development process. It helps to understand your team’s efficiency and effectiveness, and impacts the predictability of the team’s delivery. Shorter cycle times generally signify a healthy, well-functioning team, and allows for frequent delivery of value to users. Using Cycle Time metric, a team can identify bottlenecks and inefficiencies in their process, and work on improvements to deliver faster and more reliably.

Escaped Defects Metric

The Escaped Defects Metric helps gauge the quality of the software by representing the number of defects detected on production, after a release. This essentially means how many defects 'escaped' the scrum team's notice during the development phase. This metric underscores the importance of robust testing practices within the Scrum process. High numbers of escaped defects not only indicate problems with the software, but also suggest potential complications in the testing process or development workflow itself. It encourages the team to delve deeper into their methods, helping them improve further.

Work in Progress Limit

The Work in Progress (WIP) Limit is an important metric that dictates the maximum amount of work that can exist in the various stages of the workflow. It is firmly rooted in the principles of Lean and Kanban and is effectively used in the Scrum framework as well. Using a WIP limit helps teams to limit the amount of work they take on before completing current tasks, which effectively reduces multitasking, improves focus, clarifies bottlenecks and ultimately promotes a faster and smoother flow of work. It encourages the Scrum team to complete what they start before taking on more work, thereby improving overall productivity.

Throughput

Throughput is a key performance indicator that measures the average amount of work items completed per time interval, which could be measured daily, weekly, or per iteration. By monitoring throughput, teams can gain insights into their efficiency, adjust their expectations accordingly and spot trends or outliers. If the throughput decreases over time, it could signal an issue that needs to be inspected and adapted. This concept encourages organizations to continuously improve their work processes and practices.

Team Satisfaction

Though not a traditional performance metric, Team Satisfaction is incredibly important in Scrum. It can be measured through surveys or regular retrospectives. A satisfied team is more likely to be productive and invested in the project, which results in higher quality products. If team satisfaction is going down over time, this could be an indication of overwork, communication problems, or a disparity between the team's and organization's values. Regularly measuring and addressing this can greatly improve both team morale and the finished product.

Blocked Time

Blocked Time is a metric that represents the amount of time work items spend being blocked during development. Tracking this metric can help expose issues that repeatedly obstruct the team's progress, allowing them to be proactively addressed. Usually, this insight prompts further conversation around process improvements and can be a driver for organizational change.

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