Why are industrial agile teams using metrics and how do they use them?

Abstract

Agile development methods are increasing in popularity, yet there are limited studies on the reasons and use of metrics in industrial agile development. This paper presents preliminary results from a systematic literature review. Based on our study, metrics and their use are focused to the following areas: Iteration planning, Iteration tracking, Motivating and improving, Identifying process problems, Pre-release quality, Post-release quality and Changes in processes or tools. The findings are mapped against agile principles and it seems that the use of metrics supports the principles with some deviations. Surprisingly, we find little evidence of the use of code metrics. Also, we note that there is a lot of evidence on the use of planning and tracking metrics. Finally, the use of metrics to motivate and enforce process improvements as well as applicable quality metrics can be interesting future research topics.