Set Goals!

Update: In early 2022, a product reboot has happened, which pivoted the product much more towards setting goals (OKRs) but still has its roots in teamwork, metrics, and evidence-based management.

We have reached a major milestone with this release of Agile Tools. We set a goal, an objective, for ourselves, and now we are enabling you to do the same with a bit of help from our product.

Agile Tools is all about getting better, getting measurably better. We are utilizing the Evidence-Based Management measurement framework with a growing number of metrics for you to choose from.

Agile Tools is currently suited for software organizations as most of the metrics are software development-oriented, and even more specifically – for organizations that are already using Scrum as their preferred framework for agile product development. There are already some financial and HR metrics. More are on the way.

There are many elements needed to make Agile metrics work properly, but one of the most important—and most neglected—is getting agreement in advance as to the metrics that will measure what every activity or initiative is expected to accomplish, so that action can be taken if it doesn’t accomplish that, or do more of it, if it does. -Steve Denning

That agreement in advance is shaped like a goal description, or objective, if you will. Objectives work on different levels in every organization. Agile Tools terminology would translate to goals with different scopes – organization, product, and team scope.

A goal is a set of metrics, just a few of them, so you can focus, learn and improve.

The idea is to create a goal for each quarter and try to inspect, adapt, and improve in techniques or processes.

There are four roles (personas) defined in Agile Tools: Business Owner, Product Owner, Scrum Master, and Developer. Having a particular position does not change the usage of the tool (for now).

Business Owner and Product Owner roles are expected to create Goals for the organization. Product Owner and Scrum Master are expected to create Goals for the product and, finally, Scrum Master and the Developer(s) role create Goals for the team. You can read a short “Why Agile Tools” to better understand the expected dynamics of Agile Tools users.