Skip to main content

Evaluation of Team performance

Last post 05:26 pm August 29, 2025 by Daniel Wilhite
4 replies
05:41 am August 28, 2025

I am facing a problem with evaluating the performance of my development team. We are working on a cross-platform mobile app, and I want to track real performance statistics to understand whether the team is underperforming or doing well. However, I am not sure how to measure (except story points) this or which metrics I should use. How can you solve this issue or already solved?


03:49 pm August 28, 2025

Story points are of no use to you: they only help the Developers get their arms around how much work they can take on each Sprint to meet a Sprint Goal.

Are those Sprint Goals being met, and are Done increments of immediate usable quality being provided each and every Sprint? Scrum is commitment driven.

If the Developers are not meeting these commitments, find out why. Perhaps there are organizational impediments holding them back.


05:40 pm August 28, 2025

@Ian's suggestion is spot on. Who really cares if a team burns story points if there is nothing being delivered that the stakeholders want and need at a time they want and need it. 

Story points are an estimate at a specific point in time based upon the information available at that time. As soon as work begins, those estimates are no longer valid because new information has been obtained. Even if you were to use flow metrics (I recommend you read these books to learn about them - https://actionableagile.com/books/) you still know nothing about the true performance of the team.  I am assuming that the performance that the organization wants is something the makes money.  If you aren't delivering value that the stakeholders/customers/users want and need, then you won't be making money. Stop trying to put the emphasis on whether the development team is busy and start putting the emphasis on whether the stakeholders/customer/users are happy.


07:09 pm August 28, 2025

I also think Ian's suggestion is spot on here.

I'd add that, regardless of what you do, story points are the wrong measure. Consider that story points are initial estimates of the work based on what is known at the time. Unless you invest the time to update them after the work is completed (which I wouldn't recommend, as there are better uses of the team's time), they do not accurately reflect the actual time or effort required to complete the work. At best, story points are an initial planning tool, and I'm not even convinced that they are really useful for that for many teams.

I think it's key to understand what "doing well" means. Tracking whether the team achieved the Sprint Goal or not is one option that inherently comes from the Scrum framework. However, even that doesn't say anything about if the Sprint Goal was valuable enough to warrant the cost of running a Sprint - this information may not be available until after the Sprint is complete, though. There may be other options, like understanding where the team is spending their time and maximizing the time on value-add activities. However, these options aren't universally defined and are likely ot be unique to each team's context.


05:26 pm August 29, 2025

I wanted to add another resource for you to read.  It occurred to me that it might be helpful for you as well.  

Evidence-Based Management might be a useful read for you. It helped me understand how to discuss the topic of evaluating the organizations ability to be agile with more than one executive. 

https://www.scrum.org/resources/evidence-based-management


By posting on our forums you are agreeing to our Terms of Use.

Please note that the first and last name from your Scrum.org member profile will be displayed next to any topic or comment you post on the forums. For privacy concerns, we cannot allow you to post email addresses. All user-submitted content on our Forums may be subject to deletion if it is found to be in violation of our Terms of Use. Scrum.org does not endorse user-submitted content or the content of links to any third-party websites.

Terms of Use

Scrum.org may, at its discretion, remove any post that it deems unsuitable for these forums. Unsuitable post content includes, but is not limited to, Scrum.org Professional-level assessment questions and answers, profanity, insults, racism or sexually explicit content. Using our forum as a platform for the marketing and solicitation of products or services is also prohibited. Forum members who post content deemed unsuitable by Scrum.org may have their access revoked at any time, without warning. Scrum.org may, but is not obliged to, monitor submissions.