Assessing your pattern of responses
Comparing responses to key agile behaviours
Extracting behavioural factors
Your Agile IQ® results
These results are a high level view of your Agile IQ® only.
Stage :
- Self Organisation
- Agile Values
- Sprinting
- Continuous Learning Culture
What is Stage ?
Stage One suggests that you have a number of people focussed on transforming your , but relative to others, your overall agile capability maturity is likely still fairly low. Skills and expertise is typically in the hands of individuals, so delivery is typically not scalable or repeatable.
AI's benchmarks for Stage One
- Deployment Frequency: once per 100+ days
- Throughput: < 6 items per Sprint
- Lead Time for changes: 180+ days
- Mean time to recovery: 180+ days
- Change failure rate: 30%
- Psychological safety: Very low
- Cost reduction impacts: None
- Forecast NPS: < 0
- Forecast eNPS: < 0
- How to get to Stage Two
- Guardrails for self-organisation, and essential agile roles and responsibilities. Stick with industry standards for product management rather than customising frameworks your don't yet have experience with.
What to expect at Stage Two?
- Deployment Frequency: 2-3 times per 100+ days
- Throughput: < 20 items per Sprint
- Lead Time for changes: 30+ days
- Mean time to recovery: 10+ days
- Change failure rate: 22.5%
- Psychological safety: Low
- Cost reduction impacts: Low to none
- Forecast NPS: < 30
- Forecast eNPS: < 10
It can take as little as 3-6 months of concentrated effort from experienced agile practitioners to get a single program of work from Stage 1 to Stage 2.
Stage Two s are typically learning how to support self-management and be cross-functional. This typically involves many people focussed on making the shift from linear, predictive, waterfall-style planning to adaptive planning in Sprints.
The will get benefits from "agile" once the basics are truly mastered: agile roles, events, artefacts and values.
AI's benchmarks for Stage Two
- Deployment Frequency: 2-3 times per 100+ days
- Throughput: < 20 items per Sprint
- Lead Time for changes: 30+ days
- Mean time to recovery: 10+ days
- Change failure rate: 22.5%
- Psychological safety: Low
- Cost reduction impacts: Low to none
- Forecast NPS: < 30
- Forecast eNPS: < 10
If you're in a hybrid waterfall/agile model, it's important to recognise that this just is one step toward becoming agile. Make plans to slowly take more steps to move away from waterfall if you want agile's benefits: higher productivity, higher quality, lower costs and faster lead time.
- How to get to Stage Three
- Use Scrum's empiricism or Deming Cycle P-D-C-A for inspecting and adapting improvement actions. Ensure that concrete actions for improvement are put into the Sprint Backlog should result in improvements being planned not just talked about.
What to expect at Stage Three?
- Flow metrics: Time to pivot up to 1-3 months. Lead Time (Time to Market) 4-6 weeks.
- Cost reduction impact: $10M+
- Forecast psychological safety: Medium
- Forecast NPS: < 40
It can take as from 6-12 months of concentrated effort from experienced agile practitioners to get a single program of work from Stage 2 to Stage 3.
Stage 2 organisations easily slip back to Stage 1 when a crisis emerges. To avoid going backwards, organisations need to invest in moving to Stage 3.
Stage Three s start to see significant and tangible results from their investment in their agile transformation. Transparency of the health of your products and services is higher, enabling leaders to make informed decisions on where to invest.
AI's benchmarks for Stage Three
- Deployment Frequency: 2x per 100+ days
- Throughput: < 50 items per Sprint
- Lead Time for changes: 7 days
- Mean time to recovery: 24 hours
- Change failure rate: 20%
- Psychological safety: Medium
- Cost reduction impacts: $10M+ / yr
- Forecast NPS: < 40
- Forecast eNPS: < 15
- How to get to Stage Four
- Strengthen stakeholder and customer feedback loops underpinned by value-based, product management metrics. Don't just do a 'demo' or 'showcase' at Sprint Review, but ensure you inspect the business environment, talk about changes to need, and workshop what you'll all need to do as a result next Sprint.
What to expect at Stage Four?
- Deployment Frequency: 1-2x per Sprint
- Throughput: < 70 items per Sprint
- Lead Time for changes: 1-2 days
- Mean time to recovery: 12 hours
- Change failure rate: 19%
- Psychological safety: High
- Cost reduction impacts: $20M+ / yr
- Forecast NPS: < 70
- Forecast eNPS: < 30
It can take as from 9-12 months of concentrated effort from experienced agile practitioners to get a single program of work from Stage 3 to Stage 4.
If investment in continuous improvement isn't consistently applied, Stage 3 organisations easily slip back to Stage 2 or 1 within 12-18 months.
Stage Four typically reflects that most people are taking part in agile s. Most Stage 4 have shifted from "ways of working" to agile product management operating models. Relative to other , Stage 4 indicates your overall agile capability maturity is likely very high. It can take a 3-5 years to reach Stage Four.
Only 10% of business transformations reach Stage 4. At Stage 4, the organisation is typically quite resilient to disruptive change.
AI's benchmarks for Stage Four
- Deployment Frequency: 1-2x per Sprint
- Throughput: < 70 items per Sprint
- Lead Time for changes: 1-2 days
- Mean time to recovery: 12 hours
- Change failure rate: 19%
- Psychological safety: High
- Cost reduction impacts: $20M+ / yr
- Forecast NPS: < 70
- Forecast eNPS: < 30
- How to get to Stage Five
- Implement flow metrics and Lean thinking: optimising flow, minimising waste, and improving throughput.
What to expect at Stage Five
- Deployment Frequency: 1+ per day
- Throughput: < 80+ items per Sprint
- Lead Time for changes: < 1 per day
- Mean time to recovery: 7 hours
- Change failure rate: 15%
- Psychological safety: Very high
- Cost reduction impacts: $30M+ / yr
- Forecast NPS: < 80+
- Forecast eNPS: < 50+
It can take as up to 12-18 months of focussed effort from experienced agile practitioners to get a single program of work from Stage 4 to Stage 5.
If investment in continuous improvement isn't consistently applied, Stage 4 organisations easily slip back to Stage 3 or 2 within approximately 18 months.
Stage Five suggests that your is engaged in continuous and relentless improvement at a whole 'systems' perspective over just teams. Stage Five are optimised for adaptation with interchangeable building blocks that allow it to rearrange and reorient as needed in response to internal or external factors, such as a shift in customer needs, stakeholder needs, technology changes, compliance changes, or a sudden disruption in supply chain.
AI's benchmarks for Stage Five
- Deployment Frequency: 1+ per day
- Throughput: < 80+ items per Sprint
- Lead Time for changes: < 1 per day
- Mean time to recovery: 7 hours
- Change failure rate: 15%
- Psychological safety: Very high
- Cost reduction impacts: $30M+ / yr
- Forecast NPS: < 80+
- Forecast eNPS: < 50+
How to stay at Stage Five
Invest in value stream management and system thinking underpinned by value-based metrics for continuous improvement from frameworks like Evidence Based Management (EBM).
If investment in continuous improvement isn't consistently applied, Stage 5 organisations easily slip back to Stage 4 or 3 within as little as 12 months.
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