But you also need metrics. Something that you can measure and see if your actions have impact on them. In our case we have been asking our Developers, Product Owners and Product Managers the same set of questions twice. (The poll has been anonymous and people have been participating really well.) The results show nicely how the actions we have done (our focus) have improved the results in those areas. Unfortunately they also show that things that have not been paid too much attention to are not improving.
We have made big efforts to improve our Product Management and to shed more light to our Product Portfolio. Also we have invested in training our Product Owners. The results in these areas are almost stunning. According to POs and PMs the work in Portfolio has improved by 30-40%! I could call that from zero to hero. Developers are now more satisfied with their Product Owners. Although the sample size with Developers is lot bigger than with the other two group, the numbers have gone up by almost 14%.
But unfortunately there are two sides in a coin. While we have put a lot of emphasis on the Portfolio and on Product Owners, we haven't maybe paid enough attention to core of the agile. Data is ruthless and clearly shows that our efforts in Continuous Improvement and Visibility to Work have not been too good. For this I will take personal responsibility. I'm currently both Chief Scrum Master and Manager of Releases. I have been clearly concentrating too much on one part and neglecting my other responsibilities for the organizational improvement efforts and making things visible. Point taken, now I know what to improve next.
As a statistical experiment this has been very interesting. My interpretation of the results is that they validate our hypothesis. The areas we concentrate on are affected and in a positive way. Having focus does pay off!
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