DA DA Metrics, KPIs & Performance Measurement 1 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: In Disciplined Agile, which category of metrics focuses on measuring the outcomes delivered to customers rather than internal team activities?
- Output metrics
- Outcome metrics (Correct answer)
- Process metrics
- Activity metrics
Correct answer: Outcome metrics
Outcome metrics focus on the value and results delivered to customers, which DA prioritizes over tracking internal outputs or activities.
Question 2: What does the Disciplined Agile concept of 'flow efficiency' measure?
- The percentage of time work is actively being worked on versus waiting (Correct answer)
- The number of features delivered per sprint
- The ratio of passing tests to total tests
- The team velocity compared to capacity
Correct answer: The percentage of time work is actively being worked on versus waiting
Flow efficiency measures the proportion of time work spends in active processing versus sitting idle in queues, highlighting waste in the value stream.
Question 3: In the DA toolkit, which metric is used to measure the predictability of a team's delivery cadence?
- Throughput
- Lead time
- Cycle time consistency
- Velocity variance (Correct answer)
Correct answer: Velocity variance
Velocity variance tracks fluctuations in a team's velocity over time, indicating how predictable and stable their delivery cadence is.
Question 4: According to Disciplined Agile, what is the primary risk of relying solely on velocity as a performance metric?
- Velocity is too difficult to calculate accurately
- Teams may game the metric by inflating story points rather than improving real productivity (Correct answer)
- Velocity does not account for team size differences
- Velocity ignores technical debt accumulation
Correct answer: Teams may game the metric by inflating story points rather than improving real productivity
DA warns that velocity-only focus incentivizes point inflation and story padding rather than genuine productivity improvement or customer value delivery.
Question 5: Which DA principle guides teams to use metrics for learning and improvement rather than for performance evaluation of individuals?
- Optimize flow
- Be pragmatic
- Create psychological safety (Correct answer)
- Delight customers
Correct answer: Create psychological safety
DA emphasizes psychological safety so that metrics are used as learning tools for the team, not as surveillance or judgment tools against individuals.
Question 6: In Disciplined Agile, 'leading indicators' differ from 'lagging indicators' in that leading indicators:
- Are measured at the end of a project
- Predict future performance trends before outcomes occur (Correct answer)
- Only apply to financial metrics
- Require more historical data to calculate
Correct answer: Predict future performance trends before outcomes occur
Leading indicators provide early signals about future outcomes (e.g., team morale, defect injection rate), allowing teams to course-correct before problems fully materialize.
DA DA Metrics, KPIs & Performance Measurement 1
In Disciplined Agile, which category of metrics focuses on measuring the outcomes delivered to customers rather than internal team activities?