Agile Delivery Capability Assessment

Agile Delivery Capability: Framework, Questions, Benchmarks

In a previous post, we talked about the benefits of team surveys as a method of driving improvement. Surveys involve questionnaires and structured evaluations that lead to a comprehensive report, often visualized with charts, highlighting strengths, weaknesses, and providing a benchmark for improvement opportunities and future strategy. The goal is to measure current performance, identify areas for improvement, and guide organizations in their transformation journey. 

In this article we take a look at a tool that can be used create these surveys and collect the data needed to identify opportunities for teams to improve their basic agile delivery capabilities.

Agile delivery capability at its most basic is centered around 3 sets of things:

1. Forming Teams with all the necessary skills needed to deliver customer-facing value.
2. Building Product Backlogs, where items can be delivered in short timeboxes and represent value.
3. The ability to produce working, tested software as the output of every iteration.

These basics have been described at length elsewhere, for example, in this Leading Agile Video.

In this post I wanted to present a survey tool specifically customized to evaluate an organization’s capabilities in these 3 areas.

Category	Question
Team	The team understands how their work aligns to the strategy.
Team	Team members are dedicated to a single team
Team	The team is sized to enable agility (7 +/- 2 people)
Team	The team has all the skills to create working product increments
Team	Team members feel they are operating at a sustainable pace
Team	The team is empowered to make decisions on how best to do the work
Team	Team members value collective success more than individual achievement.
Team	The team consistently achieves its objectives.
Backlog	A Vision or Product Goal has been defined for the product
Backlog	The Product Backlog is the single source of work for the team
Backlog	The Product Backlog is owned and managed by a single Product Owner
Backlog	There is a Definition of Ready for Backlog Items
Backlog	Backlog items meet INVEST criteria
Backlog	Product Owner collaborates with team to refine Backlog Items
Increment	Each Sprint/Iteration has a clear goal
Increment	Completed backlog items meet Acceptance Criteria
Increment	Completed backlog items meet a Definition of Done
Increment	Majority of Backlog Items can be brought to Done in 1-3 days
Increment	The team delivers working tested product increments each Iteration

Each question can be presented in a Likert-style formulation, for example:

The team is invited to take the survey. Anonymity can be maintained to encourage openness. The tool captures and summarizes the results:

A final step would be for the team to convene to review the results and agree on any actions they want to take to address areas that need improvement.

Here is the link to the tool: Agility Surveys is a suite of integrated tools for Continuous Improvement that includes support for Agile Delivery Capability Assessments, Scaled Delivery with SAFe, PI Planning Effectiveness, Kanban Delivery and Team Engagement Surveys. You need to register to create surveys. You can then send the survey links to your teams (they do not need to register).