Why You Want To Conduct An Agile Maturity Survey

December 7, 2022 5-minute read

Intro Link to heading

Question

Have you ever started a new job at a new company and found yourself working with 20 new teams that you had no knowledge about?

What did you do to get to know them and their Agile abilities as fast as possible?

Here is what I’ve done:

I carried out an Agile maturity survey!

Working as an Agile coach is a lot of fun because you get to work with so many different people and teams. It would be beneficial to understand how those teams operate in order to make your job easier.

You can find out about a team by working closely with them for a few weeks, but what if you don’t have that kind of time? Is there a way around this? Well, there is, in my opinion!

Invite the teams to tell you themselves! A survey is the simplest method.

The Value Proposition Link to heading

There are numerous advantages to assessing a team’s Agile maturity. It allows us to determine whether a team is being Agile or simply doing Agile. A team that practises Agile is simply going through the motions, with no understanding of or commitment to Agile principles and values.

When a team’s mindset and behaviour align with the values and principles, it becomes truly Agile.

A team that is only doing Agile may still work in silos, using small waterfall based stories with design, build, and test cycles. Project deadlines can help determine priority. Morale on the team may be low.

They value their customers and are constantly striving to improve. They collaborate to create a learning environment and share information. Every iteration, the emphasis is on delivering small increments. They have the authority to use empiricism and to fail quickly.

Teams will learn about themselves as a result of this assessment. They may learn something they were not aware of, and they may come to a consensus on where they want to go next.

Preparation Link to heading

Here are the steps you should probably take:

Create a list of all team members and identify all teams.
Select the survey tool to use (e.g. Qualtrics, SurveyMonkey, etc.)
Make a list of possible questions. Sort them into various Agile sections.

Here are three things to think about:

You want to cover as many high-level Agile topics as you can. You want to keep this broad rather than deep.
Consider how long it will take to complete the survey. You probably don’t want it to take more than 20 minutes, and even that may be too long for some people.
Assign a topic to each question, such as “Work in Progress.” Then develop five responses, ranked from 1 to 5, with 1 being the least mature and 5 being the most mature. People will rank the question within the 5 levels of maturity by selecting their answers.

Conducting The Survey Link to heading

Advise the teams that it is on its way. Inform them of the why and how. Schedule it through the survey software, which also allows you to easily schedule reminders. Give it a deadline and remind the participants once or twice. Try to stay away from popular vacation times.

Analysis Link to heading

When you have all of the results, you can begin crunching the numbers. Prepare a page for each team to record the data.

Tip

Here are some examples of data to consider:

How many team members took part (per team, in percentage)?
How did they rank within a section?
Where did they rank overall?
How do all of the teams compare?

Warning

Be wary of comparing teams to one another: Do not do it! Share no results from one team with others. It’s pointless. You simply cannot compare one team to another because they are fundamentally different, rendering any comparison meaningless.

The only reason we want to compare things is for our own and the team’s benefit:

Identify Systemic Issues Link to heading

By reviewing the results, you will be able to identify areas where the majority of your teams scored poorly. These are your systemic issues!

You can now approach teams with targeted trainings, coaching, and quality time spent on those identified issues! Isn’t that wonderful?

Some teams have identified issues that other teams have not. Spend time with them on their own specific ones as well. However, begin with the low hanging fruit, the systemic issues.

Outcome Link to heading

Congratulations! You have successfully learned in a short period of time how well your teams use or do not use Agile principles.

You are now in a position to assist them based on their requirements. There will be no more guessing or attempting to figure out what they may require from you: the data will tell you. If you simply had asked the team what they require, they may not have been able to provide you with the same information the survey did.

You have established an Agile maturity baseline in your organisation!

I recommend that you repeat the survey after you have completed all of the coaching and training.

You can now compare the difference in results between the baseline and the newly run survey. It will tell you how far the teams have progressed, hopefully as a result of your efforts with them.

Running the survey once a year allows you to stay in touch with a large number of teams while also learning about potential new systemic issues.