Get insights into your value stream with the HCL Accelerate Metrics Bar

In today’s world of software development lifecycles, continuous improvement is a very common goal, with many teams using Agile as a methodology. Although many teams are implementing parts of Agile, are they actually improving? And which part of the SDLC is improving? Many companies may be tracking the key metrics that they want to follow, but it’s usually through a spreadsheet or generated using one tool out of the whole ecosystem. Neither of these ways is accurate and are cumbersome.

HCL Accelerate, our value stream management platform, solves this problem with a feature called the Metrics Bar. The metrics bar is value stream specific and can report on key metrics that the team cares about such as lead time, cycle time, build frequency, work item distribution, and more. This is extremely important to any team trying to improve its process as a whole.

A great example of this is how cycle time is correlated to quality. We all know that a high performing team can release often but with low defects created. Using HCL Accelerate metric warehouse, the metric bar can track these two metrics across many tools in real time to give you an accurate picture to make sure that improving one metric does not hurt others.

The metric bar supports up to six metrics per value stream. This allows enough metrics to see how the process is improving but not so many that it is overwhelming. Adding metrics is as easy as selecting one from the menu, and you can customize the metric to fit your organization’s needs.

These metrics are populated using data from integrations, so if you do not see data please make sure you have integrations that would correlate with that data. An example of this would be if you are looking to add Deploy Frequency to the bar, you will need integration with a tool like HCL Launch or any other deployment tool.

Don’t see a metric your team needs? In a few simple steps, you can create a custom metric that will allow endless possibilities to what you’re able to measure. If there are certain data from propriety tools, this is an easy win to get visibility to everyone. Here is a simple workbook to get you started. You can create your own custom plugin which will allow you to wrap all the calls and data manipulation into a lightweight scheduled event that will generate the metric on a set schedule.

Check out the metrics bar and other features of HCL Accelerate with our free community edition. Download it here.