Is Your Agile Training Worth The Money? - Mike Cohn
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Jan 29, 2025
Is agile training really worth the investment? This discussion dives into measuring the return on training for teams, emphasizing that well-trained agile squads can boost productivity by 30-50%. It highlights how adopting an agile approach speeds up delivery by 5-10x and increases predictability by 40%. The conversation encourages teams to establish metrics before training and assess improvements afterward, reinforcing the importance of proving ROI for future training efforts.
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volunteer_activism ADVICE
Evaluate Training Effectiveness
Assess the value, benefits, and tangible improvements from previous training.
Stop investing in training until you establish metrics you want to see change.
insights INSIGHT
Benefits of Agile Training
Well-trained Agile teams achieve 30-50% productivity gains.
They also experience 5-10x faster time to value.
insights INSIGHT
Predictability in Agile Teams
Well-trained, structured Agile teams are ~40% more predictable.
This predictability significantly improves estimations.
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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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