Chapter 21. Seeing How Far You’ve Come

Soon after beginning your effort to adopt Scrum, someone will ask, “How are we doing?” This is not a question with a simple answer like, “We’re doing great.” Similarly and fortunately, you cannot distill your answer down to, “We’re Scrum level three.” Adopting Scrum is a complex process, and answering how you’re doing at it will require a complex answer. Fortunately, many early-adopter companies have experimented with ways of doing this, and a handful of suitable approaches have been documented and are available.

In the following sections, we look at various ways of measuring how far you’ve come. We start by looking at three general-purpose agility assessments that have been used by multiple companies. Next we look at how you might tailor one of these assessments. We wrap up with a look at the importance of viewing a Scrum adoption from a balanced perspective and show a scorecard for doing just that.