Team misbalance (skills ratio)

Owned by Katsiaryna_Subach
Last updated: Jan 17, 2022 by Aleksandr Bogush
2 min read

Team setup / composition / seniority misbalance (skills ratio)

Discovered by combination of metrics:

Velocity: Committed vs. Completed, when team does not meet commitments due to the fact sprint backlog possesses tasks without any people assigned due to competency/ seniority gaps, or there is no balance between components / streams of cross-functional team 

Backlog Health, when low indicating that scope cannot reach "ready for development" state as there are blockers in refinement or/and estimation due to missing competency or lack of proper seniority in the team

Bug Growth, if issues logged during active iteration are not being fixed right away and moved to product quality debt, as there is misbalance between QA and Dev teams, or some issues cannot be resolved by the existing team and require special competency from other people 

Defect Containment, if internal team skips significant amount of valid issues which are captured by the external team meaning low quality of testing due to missing QA competency in the team, or there is misbalance between QA and Dev teams 

Open Bugs Over Time by Priority, when minor bugs get fixed but major don't indicating that Dev team lacks proper competency and seniority to handle complex cases 

Reopened Defects, when high meaning that development is done in a rush or with deliverables of low code quality what might be caused by issues in team setup incl. skillset and seniority pyramid

Defect Density - when high meaning that development is done in a rush or with deliverables of low code quality what might be caused by issues in team setup incl. skillset and seniority pyramid

Recommendations: 

  1. Keep iron triangle in balance

  2. Introduce or enhance resource & procurement management plan  

  3. Introduce or enhance change management processÂ