What KPIs should you be tracking?

Whenever we start a new project, it is extremely important to track the progress.
Sure, you can just go with the plan and hope for the best, but we all know that doesn’t work.
It doesn’t matter which methodology or framework you are using, if you don’t track your progress you are going to fail.

So what should we track?

• Hours?
• Man/Days?
• FTE?
• Lines of Code?
• Story Points?

In my years working in IT and helping teams find their best performance, I’ve found that there are 3 key metrics that matter the most.

CYCLE TIME

We use cycle time to calculate the amount of time that takes, since a request is made (by stakeholders, customer or product owner) till it is delivered. This includes all the waiting time in the backlog.

This metric helps us understand, on average, when you can expect a feature to be built and delivered.

CYCLE TIME = (DATE LAST STEP) - (DATE OF CREATION)

LEAD TIME

This one calculates the amount of time since your team picks up the item, until it gets delivered.

Lead time will give you as a product owner/product manager an overview of how long, again on average, your team requires to deliver the feature.

LEAD TIME = (DATE OF COMPLETION) - (DATE OF PICKED UP)

REPAIR TIME

Also can be called the CYCLE TIME for bugs.
This represents the amount of time since the bug was found until it was resolved.

Repair time allows us to understand the complexity of both your bugs and your system.

REPAIR TIME = (DATE OF BUG FOUND) - (DATE OF BUG RESOLVED)

Cheers,

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