Posts Tagged ‘Quality’
Use the Agile Triangle Instead of the Balanced Scorecard
As the name implies, the Balanced Scorecard strives to strike a balance between various performance measures. When Financial, Customer, Business Processes and Learning and Growth measures are presented together, as in Figure 1 below, the Balanced Scorecard allows managers to view the company from several perspectives at once.
Figure 1 – The Balanced Scorecard (source: Trump University)
Likewise, the Agile Triangle depicted in Figure 2, presents in a single “dashboard” the three dimensions critical to Agile performance measurement – Value, Quality and Constraints. Just as in the Balanced Scorecard, it is easy to see imbalances between the three, to respond to them and to restore balance. For example, the tendency to produce more and more lines of code is held in check through the quality metrics.
Figure 2 – The Agile Triangle (based on Figure 1-3 in Jim Highsmith‘s Agile Project Management: Creating Innovative Products.)
My recommendation to clients who do Agile as a strategic initiative is to drop the Balanced Scorecard and use the Agile Triangle instead. There is precious little, if any, to be gained by using the two in parallel. As a matter of fact, one could easily interfere with the other.
The Learning and Growth dimension of the Balanced Scorecard, which does not explicitly show in the Agile Triangle, is, of course, important. As part of an Agile initiative I would expect Agile proficiency to be closely observed. However, I would not include it explicitly in a system based on the Agile Triangle. Agile proficiency is not and end to itself. If the outputs and outcomes we measure through the Agile Triangle are unsatisfactory over a prolonged period of time, a close examination of the way Agile is practiced is called for.
The Headlong Pursuit of Growth, and Its Aftermath
The December 12-18, 2009 issues of The Economist features a couple of fascinating articles on Toyota Motor Corporation. According to The Economist, Toyota’s President reached the following dire conclusion on the situation Toyota is facing:
Mr Toyoda’s alarm call last month appears partly to have been prompted by reading “How the Mighty Fall”, a book by Jim Collins, an American management writer, which identifies five stages of corporate decline. Mr Toyoda reckons that Toyota may already be at the fourth stage. Companies at this point, says Mr Collins, frequently still have their destinies in their own hands, but often flit from one supposed “silver bullet” strategy to another, thus accelerating towards the fate they are trying to avoid.
In the litany of things that went wrong, an interesting point is made about the Toyota Production System:
… the recalls continued and Toyota started slipping in consumer-quality surveys. A year later Consumer Reports, an influential magazine, dropped three Toyota models from its recommended list. The magazine added that it would “no longer recommend any new or redesigned Toyota-built models without reliability data on a specific design”. People within the company believe these quality problems were caused by the strain put on the fabled Toyota Production System by the headlong pursuit of growth.
Whatever Agile method you practice – Scrum, Lean, Kanban, Crystal, etc. – you need to be cognizant of three touch points with the Toyota experience reported above:
- Just like the Toyota Production System, your software method is a “vehicle” which is subject to policy decisions from above. It cannot, however, compensate for policy failures.
- If your company relentlessly pursues growth, the quality/technical debt liability it is likely to incur coud easily outweigh the benefits of growth. Consider the upside potential of growth vis-a-vis the downside of the resultant technical debt. When appropriate, monetize technical debt using the technique described in Technical Debt on Your Balance Sheet.
- In addition to monetizing the technical debt, evaluate the various kinds of risks indicated in The View From The Executive Suite. A sense of how devastating those might be is given by Toyota’s own experience:
Just as Cadillac used to be synonymous with luxury and BMW with sportiness, Toyota was a byword for quality and reliability… The danger in all of this for Toyota is that its loyal (and mostly satisfied) customers in America have long believed that the firm was different from others and thus hold it to a higher standard. The moment that Toyota is seen as just another big carmaker, a vital part of the mystique that has surrounded the brand will have been rubbed away.
Please remember – unless you work for Toyota Motor Corporation, chances are your company would not be able to take the kind of risk Toyota can.
The Agile Executive 