We recently sent a team of consultants from my company to conduct a formal assessment of a medium sized healthcare firm’s Agile capabilities, and I thought it might be of interest to this group. We sent two consultants on site, and over the course of three days, conducted interviews and made observations in 5 areas –

• Value delivery
• Agile engineering
• Project Management
• Product management
• Environment and Organizational Culture

The investigation also took input on the demographics of the individual project being examined, the stakeholders involved and the competitive/regulatory environment in which the organization as a whole operates. Understanding the context in which an organization operates is crucial to understanding the optimal level of Agility, and thus, the plan of action.

Not every areas needs to be top-ranked to enable the company to achieve its goals. In fact, on this particular assessment we found that only one needed urgent attention – Project Management (by which we mean the techniques that enable the direction and oversight of Agile production. Most of this is focused on backlog (requirements) collection and management). On a scale of 1 to 5, the Project Management axis got a score of 1.5, while other areas were scored 3 or more. 

An advantage to this kind of numerical scoring is that it helps set a baseline to measure improvement over time.  We've recommended an action plan and will return in 90 days to re-assess and  gauge progress.