An Agile Product Delivery Assessment comprehensively evaluates your organization’s program-level Agile practices, processes, and culture. Our assessment methodology combines quantitative data analysis with qualitative insights from surveys, interviews, and observations.

The assessment provides a detailed picture of your current agile maturity level, identifying strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities for improvement across the SAFe Agile Product Delivery competency’s primary dimensions: 

1. Customer Centricity and Design Thinking
2. Develop on Cadence
3. Release on Demand.

By pinpointing specific challenges and opportunities, an Agile Product Delivery Assessment helps your organization:

• Prioritize improvement efforts and investments
• Align agile practices with business goals and strategies
• Identify and address bottlenecks and inefficiencies in your product delivery pipeline
• Foster a culture of continuous learning and innovation
• Benchmark your agile performance against industry best practices and peers

With actionable insights and recommendations, your organization can accelerate its agile transformation journey, improve team productivity and morale, and ultimately deliver greater value to your customers and stakeholders.

The assessment covers functional areas of the business, including: 

• Product management 
• Development operations 
• Program planning 
• DevOps
• Release management

From a competency perspective, it covers:

• Customer Centricity
• Design Thinking
• Product and Program Planning Preparation
• Product and Program Planning
• Program Execution
• Releasing Value
• Measure and Learn

The assessment process usually takes 2-3 weeks from start to finish.

The assessment typically follows this timeline:

• Data Collection (1-2 weeks): 

1. 1. 1. Most data is collected through a carefully crafted online survey tailored to your organization’s needs and context. 
      2. This targeted approach allows us to focus on the most relevant questions, eliminating unnecessary or redundant inquiries. 
      3. Completing the survey takes approximately 10-15 minutes per team member.

• Data Analysis and Report Preparation (1 week): 

1. 1. Once the data is collected, our experts analyze the results to identify patterns, trends, and key insights. 
   2. We then compile a comprehensive report within one week, including visualizations and recommendations.

The duration of an Agile Product Delivery Assessment may vary depending on your organization’s size and complexity.

The assessment  takes approximately 15 minutes to complete per participant.

We have designed our process to be as efficient and minimally disruptive as possible. Our streamlined approach ensures that we gather the necessary data and insights while limiting the impact on your team’s time and productivity.

Throughout the assessment, we collaborate closely with a designated point of contact within your organization to ensure smooth coordination and communication. However, the level of involvement required from your team is minimal, as we use automated web tools, survey instruments, and forms to streamline the data collection process.

Our efficient and non-intrusive approach allows your team to maintain focus on their core responsibilities while we gather the necessary information to provide valuable insights and recommendations for enhancing your agile product delivery capabilities.

The Agile Product Delivery Assessment provides a wealth of data and insights that your organization can leverage to identify areas for improvement and drive meaningful changes in your agile practices. You will receive:

1. Quantitative Data: Scores and ratings across key dimensions and sub-dimensions of agile product delivery, such as customer centricity, program planning, PI execution, and measuring and learning. This data helps you understand your current maturity level and benchmark your performance against industry standards.
2. Qualitative Insights: Detailed analysis of the free-text responses provided by your team members, revealing deeper insights into their experiences, challenges, and suggestions for improvement. This qualitative data is crucial for understanding the “why” behind the quantitative scores and identifying specific pain points and opportunities.
3. Stratified Analysis: This breaks down the data by department, team, or region, allowing you to compare performance across different parts of your organization. This granular analysis helps you pinpoint areas of strength and weakness and tailor your improvement efforts accordingly.
4. Pattern and Trend Identification: Through advanced data analysis techniques, we uncover patterns, trends, and correlations in your data that may be later apparent. These insights can reveal systemic issues, hidden dependencies, or cultural factors that impact your agile performance.
5. Customized Recommendations: Based on your organization’s specific business objectives and the insights gleaned from the assessment, we provide prioritized recommendations for improving your agile practices. These recommendations are directly tied to your desired outcomes, ensuring your improvement efforts are focused and impactful.

By leveraging these data and insights, your organization can:

• Identify and prioritize specific areas for improvement aligned to your business objectives
• Set measurable goals for improvement projects to assess their effectiveness
• Foster a culture of continuous improvement by sharing insights and best practices across your organization and empowering teams to take ownership of their agile journey.
• Track your progress over time by conducting regular assessments and measuring your performance against baseline data and industry benchmarks.

Our Agile Product Delivery Assessment methodology distinguishes itself from other agile assessment tools and services in several critical aspects:

1. Business Objective Alignment: 
   1. We start every engagement by understanding your organization’s business objectives.
   2. While other companies often use a standard, inflexible questionnaire across all clients, we take the time to align our assessment with your unique goals and desired outcomes. 
   3. This targeted approach ensures that our findings and recommendations are directly relevant to your needs and can drive a meaningful impact on your business.
2. Customized Research Instrument: 
   1. We tailor our questionnaire to gather the most pertinent and insightful data based on your organization’s objectives and current state. 
   2. By adapting our research instrument to your context, we can uncover nuances and insights that generic, off-the-shelf assessments would likely miss. 
   3. This customization lets us provide a more accurate, comprehensive, and actionable picture of your agile maturity.
3. Qualitative and Quantitative Analysis: 
   1. While most other assessment services rely solely on quantitative data, we recognize the immense value of qualitative insights. 
   2. Our methodology strongly emphasizes qualitative analysis, leveraging your team members’ rich, free-text responses. 
   3. By combining qualitative and quantitative data, we can paint a more holistic and nuanced picture of your agile practices, uncovering the “why” behind the numbers and identifying key areas for improvement.
4. Rich Conclusions and Actionable Recommendations: 
   1. The depth and breadth of our data collection and analysis allow us to draw meaningful, substantive conclusions about your agile product delivery capabilities. 
   2. Rather than simply applying a generic “best practice framework,” we provide customized recommendations that align with your unique business objectives and organizational context. 
   3. We understand that every client is different, and we tailor our guidance to maximize the value and impact of your specific situation.
5. Focus on Meaningful Impact: 
   1. Our ultimate goal is to help your organization achieve its desired outcomes and drive tangible, lasting improvement in your agile practices. By aligning our assessment and recommendations with your business objectives, we ensure that our work has a concrete, positive impact on your product delivery performance, team effectiveness, and customer satisfaction. 
   2. While other providers may focus on surface-level metrics or generic benchmarks, we prioritize the meaningful results that matter most to your organization.

Yes, our Agile Product Delivery Assessment is highly customizable to align with your organization’s specific needs and goals. 

We understand that every organization is unique, with its challenges, priorities, and objectives. That’s why we take a tailored approach to ensure that the assessment provides maximum value and relevance to your context.

1. Our assessment process begins with identifying your organization’s business objectives. By aligning the assessment with your objectives from the outset, we ensure that the entire process is focused on delivering insights and recommendations that directly support your desired outcomes.
2. Based on your organization’s goals and current state, we customize the research instrument used in the assessment. Rather than using a generic, one-size-fits-all questionnaire, we adapt the questions to probe the most pertinent areas of your situation. This tailored approach allows us to gather targeted data that illuminates the specific strengths, challenges, and opportunities within your agile product delivery practices.
3. Our recommendations are contextualized to your organization’s goals and constraints. Rather than providing generic, off-the-shelf advice, we craft actionable recommendations considering your unique organizational culture, resources, and priorities. We work closely with you to prioritize the initiatives to deliver the greatest impact and value, ensuring that the assessment outcomes are pragmatic and achievable within your context.

Our team brings a wealth of qualifications and experience to every Agile Product Delivery Assessment engagement:

• Our consultants are certified SAFe Program Consultants (SPCs), with deep expertise in applying SAFe principles and practices in real-world contexts.
• Our team members have extensive hands-on experience leading agile transformations across diverse industries and organizations of different sizes.
• We carefully select consultants with specific expertise in your industry, ensuring that you receive tailored guidance that is aligned with your business environment.
• Our consultants have experience working with teams and portfolios of various sizes, from small, co-located teams to large, globally distributed programs.
• Many of our team members have backgrounds in other agile methodologies and complementary frameworks, allowing them to draw from various tools and practices.
• Our consultants are skilled facilitators, communicators, and problem-solvers, adept at building strong relationships with stakeholders at all levels of the organization.

We take the confidentiality and security of your data very seriously. Here’s how we ensure the protection of your information:

• All data collected during the assessment process is stored on secure, encrypted servers with strict access controls.
• We have robust data privacy policies that comply with industry standards and regulations, such as GDPR and HIPAA.
• Our team members are trained in data protection best practices and are bound by strict confidentiality agreements.
• When sharing sensitive information, we use secure communication channels, such as encrypted email and secure file transfer protocols.
• The assessment results and reports are only shared with designated stakeholders within your organization, as agreed upon at the start of the engagement.
• We anonymize and aggregate data in our reports to protect the privacy of individual respondents and teams.
• At the end of the engagement, we securely dispose of any no longer needed data in accordance with our data retention policies.

We offer two main follow-up services – Agile Jump-Starts and Agile Accelerators. 

1. Agile Jump-Starts are designed to help organizations establish new services or competencies, providing a high-impact, structured, and efficient approach tailored to their specific needs. 
2. Agile Accelerators focus on enhancing existing services or competencies, quickly implementing improvements through a customized, results-oriented strategy.

Additionally, we offer a full range of Agile Coaching, Training, Change and Transformation services: 

1. Agile Coaching: Our experienced Agile Coaches work alongside your teams to guide them in applying agile practices, overcoming obstacles, and continuously improving their performance. They provide hands-on support and mentoring to help your teams internalize and operationalize the recommendations from the assessment.
2. Training: We offer a variety of training programs to build the skills and knowledge your teams need to succeed with Agile. From introductory courses to advanced workshops, our training offerings are designed to meet your organization’s specific needs and support implementing the assessment recommendations.
3. Facilitation: Our consultants are skilled facilitators who can help you run effective meetings, workshops, and events that drive alignment, collaboration, and progress toward your agile goals. Whether you need support with backlog refinement, sprint planning, retrospectives, or other key agile ceremonies, we can help you facilitate those conversations and ensure they lead to meaningful outcomes.
4. Leadership Development: Agile transformations often require a leadership mindset and behavior shift. Our leadership development programs help your leaders understand their role in supporting agile, develop the skills they need to lead agile teams effectively and create a culture that enables Agility to thrive.

Change Management: Implementing the recommendations from an Agile Product Delivery Assessment often involves significant organizational change. Our change management services help you navigate that change effectively, from developing a change strategy to engaging stakeholders, communicating the vision, and managing resistance.

Our Agile Product Delivery Assessment is designed to be conducted remotely, providing maximum flexibility and convenience. We leverage various digital tools and platforms to gather data, conduct interviews, and collaborate with your team members, regardless of their location.

The core of our assessment process is a web-based survey that your team members can complete at their own pace from anywhere with an internet connection. 

However, some organizations may prefer having certain assessment aspects conducted on-site. If that’s the case for your organization, we’ll accommodate your preferences. For example, we can conduct the readout presentation, recommendations, and brainstorming workshop on-site, allowing for more face-to-face interaction and collaboration.

Getting started with an Agile Product Delivery Assessment is easy. Contact our team to schedule a call, and we’ll guide you.

During the initial call, we’ll take the time to understand your organization’s specific needs, goals, and challenges. After the call, we’ll provide a customized proposal outlining the assessment’s scope, timeline, and deliverables. Once you approve the proposal, we’ll handle all the heavy lifting.