Search
Close this search box.
Search
Close this search box.
Search
Close this search box.

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:

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