Team Guide to Metrics for Business Decisions
Team Guide to Metrics for Business Decisions
About the Book
How can software teams keep a laser-like focus on outcomes whilst improving practices and flow? How can software teams understand where the bottlenecks are in their processes? And how can software teams provide reliable forecasts of when work will be done? The answer to these questions is: software teams should use Business Metrics.
Teams that use Business Metrics understand Throughput, Lead Time, Forecasting, Flow, Quality, and Value - all measures that speak directly to business outcomes. By using Business Metrics, your software team will produce software that is more business-relevant with more certainty and less waste.
Learn how metrics can help your software team answer questions like “How fast are we going? What should we do next? Where’s the bottleneck?” Deliver software more effectively with greater certainty.
Team Guide to Metrics for Business Decisions is the second guidebook in the collection from Skelton Thatcher Publications (part of Conflux Books). The ‘Team Guide’ collection is designed to help teams building and running software systems to be as effective as possible. Guides are curated by experienced practitioners and emphasise the need for collaboration and learning, with the team at the centre.
About the Authors
Bundles that include this book
About the Contributors
Manuel Pais is an independent DevOps and Delivery Consultant, focused on teams and flow.
With a diverse experience including development, build management, testing and QA, Manuel has helped large organizations in finance, legal, and manufacturing adopt test automation and continuous delivery, as well as understand DevOps from both technical and human perspectives.
Manuel is co-author of the Team Guide to Software Releasability book and lead editor for the remaining books in the Team Guide series.
Matthew Skelton is co-author of Team Topologies: organizing business and technology teams for fast flow. Head of Consulting at Conflux (confluxdigital.net), he specialises in Continuous Delivery, operability and organisation dynamics for software in manufacturing, ecommerce, and online services, including cloud, IoT, and embedded software.
Recognised by TechBeacon in 2018 as one of the top 100 people to follow in DevOps, Matthew curates the well-known DevOps team topologies patterns at devopstopologies.com and is co-author of the books Continuous Delivery with Windows and .NET (O’Reilly, 2016) and Team Guide to Software Operability (Skelton Thatcher Publications, 2016). He is also co-founder at Conflux Books which publishes books for technologists by technologists.
Table of Contents
- 1. Team Guides for Software
- 2. Conflux Books
- 3. Acknowledgements
- 4. Praise for Metrics for Business Decisions
- 5. Index of Case Studies
-
6. Introduction
- 6.1 What is covered in this book
- 6.2 All the time in the world
- 6.3 Value, quality, & operational metrics
- 6.4 How to use this book
- 6.5 Get Started!
- 6.6 Feedback and suggestions
-
7. Throughput: How fast are we going?
- 7.1 Why should I care about throughput?
- 7.2 What’s the problem with velocity and story points?
- 7.3 What is throughput?
- 7.4 Use throughput for short term predictions
- 7.5 Use throughput to validate experiments
- 7.6 Use throughput for long term predictions
- 7.7 Debunking some myths
- 7.8 Public resources
- 7.9 Get started!
- 7.10 Summary
-
8. Lead Time: How long will this take?
- 8.1 Why should I care about lead time?
- 8.2 What is lead time?
- 8.3 Measuring lead time
- 8.4 Use lead time to make predictions
- 8.5 Use lead time to answer business questions
- 8.6 Use lead time for continuous improvement
- 8.7 Use lead time to answer “What should we work on today?”
- 8.8 Debunking some myths
- 8.9 Public resources
- 8.10 Get started!
- 8.11 Summary
-
9. Forecasting and Planning: When will it be done?
- 9.1 Why should I care about forecasting?
- 9.2 The common way of estimating
- 9.3 How long will this feature/project take?
- 9.4 Answering business questions with probabilistic forecasting
- 9.5 Forecasting tips & tricks: how to improve your forecasts
- 9.6 The benefits of forecasting
- 9.7 Debunking some myths
- 9.8 Public resources
- 9.9 Get started!
- 9.10 Summary
-
10. Metrics for Flow: Where is the bottleneck?
- 10.1 Why should I care about flow?
- 10.2 What is flow
- 10.3 Use a cumulative flow diagram to answer: Is work flowing well?
- 10.4 Use net flow to answer: Is our process balanced?
- 10.5 Use flow efficiency to improve the end-to-end process
- 10.6 Public resources
- 10.7 Get started!
- 10.8 Summary
-
11. Metrics for Quality: How do we know this works?
- 11.1 Why should I care about metrics for quality?
- 11.2 What do we mean by quality?
- 11.3 Use quality metrics to identify the needs of various groups of people
- 11.4 Use quality metrics to discover who is affected by quality
- 11.5 Use quality metrics to identify and reduce Failure Demand
- 11.6 Use quality metrics to tell compelling stories to the right people
- 11.7 Debunking some myths
- 11.8 Get started!
- 11.9 Summary
-
12. Metrics for Value: Is this worth doing?
- 12.1 Why should I care about value metrics?
- 12.2 What are metrics for value?
- 12.3 Provide a foundation of operational and quality metrics
- 12.4 Measure usage: is anyone using it?
- 12.5 Use the Pirate Metrics: AARRR
- 12.6 Make your customers part of the decision-making process
- 12.7 Expect to keep learning and adapting
- 12.8 Debunking some myths
- 12.9 Get started!
- 12.10 Summary
- 13. Terminology
-
14. References and further reading
- 14.1 Introduction
- 14.2 Chapter 1 - Throughput
- 14.3 Chapter 2 - Lead Time
- 14.4 Chapter 3 - Forecasting and planning
- 14.5 Chapter 4 - Metrics for Flow
- 14.6 Chapter 5 - Metrics for Quality
- 14.7 Chapter 6 - Metrics for Value
-
15. About the authors
- 15.1 Mattia Battiston
- 15.2 Chris Young
- 15.3 Why we wrote this book
- 16. Index
About the Publisher
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