Key Indicators for Evaluating Genuine Agile Practices

1. Unified Requirement Pool

All teams, whether small or part of a larger train (e.g., SAFe’s Program Backlog vs. Team Backlog), should work from a single backlog to avoid hidden or conflicting priorities caused by multiple demand sources.

2. User‑Perspective Requirement Description

Requirements must be split and described from the user’s viewpoint rather than a technical one, ensuring each completed item delivers observable value and can be released.

3. Consistent Requirement Flow

The order in which requirements enter the team should roughly match the order they exit; otherwise, prioritization loses meaning. Teams need to start work based on priority, identify and resolve dependencies early, and help each other when high‑priority items get blocked.

4. Short Lead Time

The time from a requirement entering the team to its delivery should be as brief as possible, reflecting the team’s responsiveness. This requires breaking work into small pieces, limiting concurrent work, early risk identification, rapid obstacle removal, focusing on flow efficiency over resource utilization, avoiding weekend work, and mutual assistance.

5. High Iteration Completion Percentage

Teams should aim for at least 80% of planned work completed per iteration, which signals reliable delivery. Achieving this demands small, well‑sized requirements, realistic planning, thorough dependency and risk handling, and smooth workflow.

6. Stable Iteration Velocity

While exact velocity need not be identical each iteration, it should hover around a central value with reasonable fluctuations, supporting stable planning. This requires a stable team, cross‑functional composition, role redundancy, rhythmic work cadence, and adherence to a clear definition of done.

The above points represent typical R&D‑focused considerations; true end‑to‑end business agility also involves value assessment and business‑side participation, which are beyond the scope of this article.