Is Your Agile Training Worth The Money? - Mike Cohn
Providing agile training to teams is an investment. With any investment, it is wise to assess the return you can expect. So let me ask you:
How much value did your last team training deliver? What benefits did you receive? What tangible improvements did your team realize?
If you can’t answer these questions, you shouldn’t spend another dime on training until you establish a set of metrics you want to see change after the training. What metrics am I talking about specifically?
You can expect many proven benefits from training. I tend to focus on three.
- Well-trained agile teams realize productivity gains of at least 30-50%
- Most teams see faster time to value just from switching to an agile way of working. Well-trained teams should move 5–10x faster
- Organizations can expect well-trained and well-structured agile teams to be around 40% more predictable
(See the blog “Do the Proven Benefits of Agile Training Justify the Costs” for the data behind these claims)
In addition to these three, you might want to consider other benefits as well: improved innovation, higher user and stakeholder satisfaction, and better quality products.
Before your next team training, get a baseline of where your teams stand now in terms of these metrics. Then, measure how much they improve in the three months after training.
Proving ROI is important both for your own peace of mind in knowing whether the training was effective, and also to help justify future investments in training. Let me help you do just that.
We’ve created a free Agile Training ROI calculator you can use to help you think through the value you can expect from training. I’ve included instructions and an example to help you get the most from it. Take a look and see what you think.
Investing in the right training for your teams, and measuring the improvements you receive, will help you succeed with agile.
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