How do you measure whether an Agile adoption is actually succeeding?

Question

Accepted Answer

Real success is measured by **business and customer outcomes**, not by how faithfully a team performs ceremonies. The trap is measuring activity (standups held, velocity numbers) instead of value. Good measurement combines delivery performance, product impact, and team health.

## What to measure

```text
DELIVERY      lead time, deployment frequency, change-fail rate,
              time to restore (DORA metrics)
PRODUCT       customer satisfaction, feature adoption, value delivered
TEAM HEALTH   engagement, sustainable pace, psychological safety
```

Outcome metrics ("did users get value faster?") beat output metrics ("how many points?").

## Concrete example

After an adoption, a team's lead time from idea to production drops from 6 weeks to 5 days and customer-reported defects fall. That is success — regardless of whether velocity went up.

## Common pitfalls

- Equating "we do Scrum" with "we are succeeding."
- Optimizing velocity, a vanity metric, at the expense of real outcomes.
- Ignoring team health, producing short-term output and long-term burnout.

## Why it matters

Outcome-based measurement keeps the adoption honest: it rewards delivering value, not performing rituals.

Leaders fund Agile to get faster, safer value delivery — proving that with outcome metrics is what earns continued support and prevents reversion.