Using Formal Metrics in Agile Software Development: Added Value or Toxic Waste?

One of Achilles' heels in Agile Software Development is the use of Metrics. The main point is that Story Points or Ideal Days, two of the more commonly used concepts to gauge effort in Agile, are subjective to the team. As such, you cannot use a metric such Velocity (i.e.  # of Story Points/Sprint) to benchmark your process and perform comparisons, for example to decide whether a new project is within the Team's possibilities. More formal metrics like IFPUG Function Points might come to the rescue: the big issue is how to integrate them in processes in which you generally don't have the requirements finely detailed upfront. Carol Dekkers, former President of IFPUG, has recently written an article exactly on this matter.

There is certainly a lot of value in being able to measure in an objective way what is being produced by the Team: this also discloses you the vast data pool collected at ISBSG, where you can get the proper data for your benchmarking. Moreover, the ability to create your FP baseline against effort and costs, surely provides an improvement in the governance of the whole software development process.

On the other side, if you adopt a Lean point of view, any effort that does not directly produce a concrete shippable increment is frowned upon as potential waste: in this sense, many Agile teams are reluctant to adopt a structured approach to sizing metrics (favoring the "left side" of the Agile Manifesto).

The point is on finding the balance: is a better governance of your project ultimately producing a better product?

The crux of the matter is recognizing that creating a correct strategy for your roadmap is fundamental to the Team's composition, organization and stability, which in turns determine the Team's ability to self-guide to the delivery of a quality increment for each sprint. If this is important to your project, then introducing a formal size metric is not waste, but solid gold.

Thimoty is a IFPUG Certified Function Point Specialist and an active contributor to the Function Points community. He is available for Function Point consulting and Agile coaching. You can get in touch at thimoty@thimoty.it.