Agile methods are supposed to make DW/BI development faster, better, and cheaper. Yet without monitoring and control mechanisms, agile teams can drift and fail to deliver, just as easily as traditionally managed projects. Luckily, one needs only a handful of key performance metrics to make an agile teams highly successful. In this presentation, Ralph Hughes, the creator of the Agile Data Warehousing method, will share with you the seven trend lines he users to monitor and direct the agile projects he leads.

These metrics cover the stretch from requirements management through module programming and into system validation. They include measures for:

• Accuracy of team estimates
• Developer productivity
• Quality of specifications by engineering role
• Remaining project cost and duration
• Effectiveness of quality assurance
• Stakeholder benefits realized

This collection of metrics has been honed over multiple decades of practice so they are easy to collect and calculate, yet remain powerful in their ability to not only detect when and where the development process has broken down, but to demonstrate that corrective action has restored team productivity. Ralph has regularly used these metrics to structure agile transitions for traditional DW/BI programs that have been able triple programmer productivity, drive defects to zero, and cut development costs in half, all while dramatically increasing customer satisfaction. In this presentation, you hear discussed:

• The core value chain within an agile development process
• The agile approach to managing requirements, estimating work effort, and ensuring quality
• The hallmarks of “good” metrics and types of measures to avoid
• Multiple channels for keeping management and programmers apprised of their effectiveness
• How automated test engines and usage monitors can be leveraged into measuring team performance

By quantifying, visualizing, and tracking performance, project leaders can ensure their agile teams focus on success from day one and become steadily better at delivering software that delights the customers.