I am currently reading Dan Pink’s book “Drive”. I think it fits in very nicely with this whole notion of the value of goals being based on capabilities. Estimates inflicted on us or enforced by an outside entity probably equates to what Pink would call an “extrinsic motivation”. They become “sticks” that create a dynamic of working to avoid consequences and hopefully instead get a carrot/reward. People WILL perform to this. HOWEVER, people perform far better when seeking reward in “intrinsic motivation”. As we support capability goals toward a common vision, everyone wins: the individual, the organization, and the corporation.

Jean

I feel that measures that are internal to team must be kept that way as they are for learning/diagnosis and transient once they’ve served their purpose we don’t need to gather them.

Velocity of story points delivered per iteration (sprint) is an internal measure for team to reflect on and improve the process or diagnose what went wrong if in a given iteration (sprint) there was unexpected variation (Signal) i.e. we were outside the upper/lower bounds provided we have evidence that this is not just a one off.

I think a good capability measure for teams is the cycle time for converting an idea to working software in live production with the idea (projects) categorised in small, medium and large and then have the variation as the capability of te team i.e. lower and upper bounds and the mean shown on a capability chart as opposed to one figure or tabulated data. I’ll have a separate capability chart for each size.