Evidence-Based Management
A data-driven approach to measure value delivered to customers.
Evidence-Based Management (EBM) is an empirical approach that provides organizations with the ability to measure the value they deliver to customers and the means by which they deliver that value, and to use those measures to guide improvements in both.
EBM consists of four Key Value Areas (KVAs)
Key-Value Area
Ability to Innovate
Expresses the ability of a product development organization to deliver new capabilities that might better meet customer needs.
The goal of looking at the A2I is to maximize the organization’s ability to deliver new capabilities and innovative solutions. Organizations should continually re-evaluate their A2I by asking:
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What prevents the organization from delivering new value?
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What prevents customers or users from benefiting from that innovation?
A variety of things can impede a team from being able to deliver new capabilities and value: spending too much time fixing defects or reducing technical debt, having to maintain multiple code branches or product versions, a complex or monolithic application architecture, insufficient product-like environments to test on, lack of operational excellence, poor code management practices, lack of decentralized decision-making, inability to hire and inspire talented, passionate team members, and so on.
As low-value features and systemic impediments accumulate, more budget and time are consumed maintaining the product or overcoming impediments, reducing its available capacity to innovate. In addition, anything that prevents users or customers from benefitting from innovation, such as hard-to-install software or lack of capabilities that would be compelling enough to warrant installing the software, will also reduce A2I.
A sample of Agile Tools metrics in this Key-Value Area
Velocity Fluctuation
Are you context switching?
Velocity
Is your product team stable?
Sprint Goal Success
Is the team cooperating in achieving a common goal?
How is EBM related to OKRs?
Each metric can be classified in one (or two) EBM Key-Value Areas. By using metrics in your goal's key results, you can see in which of the four EBM areas you try to create an impact.