Scrum Metrics: Why Follow, How to Measure + Free Infographic

To succeed in software development, you shouldn't just focus on completing tasks. You should see how well your team works together, how efficiently they deliver results, and how consistently they meet their sprint goals. Tracking the right Scrum metrics helps you understand your team’s progress, identify opportunities for improvement, and align your efforts with larger business objectives.

With the right metrics, you can transform daily stand-ups, sprint planning, and retrospective meetings into insights that improve team productivity and project outcomes. Whether you're analyzing sprint velocity or cycle time, each data point gives you the power to improve your processes and achieve better results.

At Axify, we’re here to help you turn these insights into consistent performance. Let’s get started with Scrum metrics that every Agile team needs to know.

What Are Scrum Metrics?

Scrum metrics are data points that measure your team’s performance, track sprint progress, and evaluate the overall health of your projects. These metrics give you a clear picture of how your development process is performing, from understanding team velocity to analyzing cycle time.

Focusing on Scrum-specific metrics allows you to identify bottlenecks, improve team effectiveness, and ensure that your efforts align with all the correct Agile principles (like continuous improvement).

Your Scrum team also relies on these insights to plan future sprints, monitor sprint backlog completion, and evaluate team satisfaction and productivity. You’ll need these metrics to make informed decisions and deliver high-quality products while aligning with your business goals.

Scrum Metrics vs. Kanban Metrics

Scrum metrics focus on performance within structured, time-boxed sprints. Kanban metrics, on the other hand, prioritize maintaining a steady workflow.

Let’s explain in more depth.

Scrum metrics help you track sprint planning, delivery goals, and predictability. They give you insights into stability and progress. Metrics such as team velocity and ceremonies like sprint retrospectives and sprint reviews let your development team improve their approach. That’s how they ensure each sprint contributes to continuous improvement efforts.

Kanban metrics focus on throughput, consistent cycle times, and work in progress (WIP) limits. They help you visualize how work moves through your process. These agile metrics allow you to improve your team’s performance over time by highlighting bottlenecks and inefficiencies.

Why Follow Scrum Metrics?

Scrum metrics are important for your team’s success. As we already explained, they clearly show how well your team is performing, help you improve processes, and deliver better results. Here’s how they make a difference:

• Improve efficiency: Metrics such as team velocity and cycle time help you plan smarter for upcoming sprints and deliver high-quality products faster.
• Identify bottlenecks: Tracking work item age and project progress helps you spot delays and address them quickly to maintain momentum.
• Ensure alignment with Agile principles: The right metrics encourage continuous improvement, promote positive team dynamics, and align your efforts with business goals.

Teams that fully adopt Scrum see solid results. 

Studies show that Full Scrum has helped teams achieve 250% better quality than teams that don't use it. It’s no wonder that 78% of teams use Scrum with other Agile frameworks to achieve consistent performance.

Key Scrum Metrics to Track

Tracking the right Scrum metrics helps you better understand your team’s performance and make smarter decisions. This section will show you the key metrics to focus on. Below, we’ll also show you how to leverage these KPIs to scale your team performance.

Sprint Metrics

Sprint metrics help you measure :

1. WIP

Work in progress measures the number of tasks your team handles at any given time.

Limit WIP to prevent multitasking and boost focus. Axify helps you track WIP and ensure your development teams stay productive without overwhelming their capacity.

Studies show that only 2.5% of people can effectively multitask. For most, juggling tasks reduces productivity and increases errors.

2. Throughput

This metric measures the number of tasks your team completes within a specific time frame, giving you insights into team efficiency and consistency. Monitoring throughput trends in Axify helps you identify bottlenecks, understand team capacity, and make data-driven decisions to optimize workflows. For example, you might adjust task prioritization or implement changes to improve collaboration and productivity. You can also add more automation and shift left on your QA processes, improving project plans and delivery speed.

3. Cycle time

This metric measures the total time it takes to complete a task from start to finish. However, it doesn’t include the backlog period.

Correctly shortening cycle time allows your team to complete tasks quicker while maintaining good product quality. As such, you’ll improve responsiveness to changes and ensure faster progress in each sprint.

You can use Axify to identify delays and adjust your workflows for better future performance.

Quality Metrics

4. Change Failure Rate

This represents the percentage of deployments resulting in failures that need fixes.

Axify lets you visualize failure trends and work on reducing defects in upcoming sprints. High-performing teams often aim for CFR rates below 15%.

5. Failed Deployment Recovery Time

Failed deployment recovery time (formerly Mean Time to Recovery) measures how long it takes to resolve issues after a failure. And unfortunately, around 80% of MTTR time is spent diagnosing the root cause of failure, often identifying and fixing bugs. 

On average, software projects experience 15-50 bugs per 1,000 lines of code. 

So, monitoring bug counts and addressing critical issues early is key to reducing recovery time and ensuring project stability.

Axify provides insights into recovery workflows and bug tracking, helping teams allocate resources effectively and maintain low defect density. You can deliver a higher-quality product and maintain consistent progress by improving how your team handles bugs and failures.

6. Time Investment on Bugs

How many bugs you have is not the only bug-related indicator that matters. How much time you spend on fixing them also matters. Some studies show that developers spend 75% of their work hours debugging – that’s about 1,500 hours annually.

To fix that, track how debugging impacts team productivity. With Axify, you can improve your team's balance between bug fixes and delivering user stories.

Team Wellbeing

7. Team Happiness

A positive team culture can lead to up to 400% revenue growth. That’s why you need an indicator like team happiness, which measures how satisfied and motivated your team feels while working.

To improve team happiness, you first need to be able to measure it, and this Team Wellbeing Tracker is a solid tool. Monitoring important metrics related to this will help you spot and correct issues early on. You’ll be able to create psychological safety, positive team dynamics, and better collaboration across cross-functional teams.

Scrum Metrics Template

Scrum metrics help you track your team’s performance and guide your continuous improvement efforts. Below, we've created a Scrum metrics template outlining these key indicators, their definitions, and how to use them effectively.

We also created a downloadable Excel table. You can use it to track key Scrum metrics across different tasks.

How to Use Scrum Metrics to Scale Team Performance

Scrum metrics show you issues and patterns. Use these insights to solve difficulties and improve your team's efficiency and focus. 

Here’s the problem:

Tracking the correct data helps you improve planning, reduce bottlenecks, and ensure consistent progress, but only if you know how to use it. 

Here’s how to use specific metrics to scale your team’s performance and deliver better results.

Analyze Velocity Trends to Set Realistic Sprint Goals

Reviewing past sprint velocity helps you understand how much work your team can handle. You can use this data to set achievable goals for your next sprint. For example, if your team completes an average of 10 backlog items per sprint, assigning them more than this risks overcommitting and lowering morale.

You can also use Axify's Software Delivery Forecasting Tool to estimate the number of items your team can deliver over a specific period and their deadlines. These trends keep your planning realistic and aligned with your team’s capacity so everyone works sustainably without compromising quality.

Use a Planned-to-Done Ratio to Refine Sprint Planning

Your planned-to-done ratio shows how much of your planned work was completed in recent sprints. If this ratio regularly falls below 80%, it’s a sign that your team's capacity may be overestimated.

Adjust your future sprint plans to align more closely with what your team can realistically accomplish. This will create a balance between ambition and feasibility, boost team morale, and improve the success rate of your sprints.

Break Down Large Stories to Improve Cycle Time

If tasks take too long to complete, you should break down large user stories into smaller, manageable tasks. This will make progress more visible and reduce each task's time spent in development.

You can track how quickly these smaller tasks move through the sprint. This improves efficiency and helps you spot potential bottlenecks early to ensure smoother workflows and better outcomes for your team.

Identify Blockers with Work Item Age

Tracking the age of in-progress tasks helps uncover bottlenecks that could slow your team down. If a task remains untouched for several days or weeks, it signals that something might prevent progress. So, make sure to bring these stalled tasks up in your daily stand-ups to identify and resolve the issue quickly.

For example, if a user story has been idle for three days, ask your team what’s holding it back. Addressing these delays promptly improves workflows and keeps your sprint on track. 

Remember: The point is not just to keep your momentum strong but to prevent errors that can snowball in the future – both in terms of resources you waste for solving them and customer satisfaction.

Improve Sprint Quality Using Defect Density Metrics

Defect density reveals how many bugs or issues exist relative to completed work. A high defect density means your sprint output could be suffering in quality. You should prioritize resolving technical debt and bugs in your next sprint to keep standards high.

For instance, dedicate 20% of your sprint to fixing critical defects that might otherwise derail your team’s progress. This focused approach reduces potential risks and improves the overall reliability of your product, ensuring your sprints consistently deliver value without compromising quality.

Combine Retrospective Insights with DORA Metrics

DORA metrics give you a clear picture of your team’s performance over time, and combining these insights with retrospectives can uncover valuable lessons. You can use trends from these metrics to identify pain points, such as a sudden drop in deployment frequency or oversized deployments causing delays.

Pinpointing these issues helps you create actionable plans to improve future workflows. This combination of retrospectives and DORA insights keeps your team aligned and continuously moving toward better outcomes.

Best Practices for Tracking Scrum Metrics

Tracking Scrum metrics is essential for keeping your team aligned and improving over time. However, how you approach metrics can make or break their effectiveness. These best practices below can help ensure your metrics drive real value without creating unnecessary friction or confusion.

Focus on Trends, Not Single Data Points

Scrum metrics are most valuable when you look at trends over time rather than isolated numbers. A single data point might not tell you the whole story. For example, a one-time dip in velocity could result from unexpected external factors, not a systemic issue.

Trends, however, show consistent patterns and give you deeper insights into your team’s performance. Focusing on these patterns helps you make informed decisions that lead to meaningful improvements in your processes and project outcomes.

Use Metrics as a Tool for Improvement, Not Blame

Metrics are designed to highlight opportunities, not point fingers. When you use metrics to assign blame, you create a culture of fear that stifles collaboration and innovation. Instead, use them to identify areas where your team can grow and support them in making changes.

Fernando Almeida and Pedro Carneiro outline the issue in their study, Perceived Importance of Metrics for Agile Scrum Environments.

The solution is to let metrics be the foundation for positive change rather than conflict.

Involve the Team in Metric Discussions to Ensure Buy-In

Metrics are most effective when everyone on your team understands and supports their purpose. You should involve your team in discussions about which metrics to track and how to use them. When your team feels ownership over the process, they’re more likely to stay engaged and work toward improvement.

Research shows that companies with highly engaged employees achieve 23% higher profitability than their competitors. That’s the power of collaboration and commitment.

That’s why we advise you to encourage open conversations during retrospectives or planning sessions. Discuss alternatives if the team feels specific metrics don’t accurately reflect their work. This will boost engagement and ensure the metrics you track align with your team’s reality.

Best Tools to Track Scrum Metrics

Choosing the right tools to track Scrum metrics is key to keeping your team aligned and improving performance. The right tool will simplify the process and provide actionable insights to guide your decisions.

Let’s see three standout options for engineering teams.

Axify: Tracks DORA Metrics and More

Axify takes your Scrum tracking to the next level by offering in-depth, real-time insights into essential metrics like DORA, cycle time, and work in progress. It’s built to give you a clear picture of your team’s performance across all stages of the development process. With Axify, you can align your teams seamlessly and stay ahead of potential issues.

What makes Axify unique is its framework-agnostic approach. Whether you follow Scrum, Kanban, or a mix, Axify pulls data from your tools and provides meaningful, actionable reports.

You’ll love how it helps you highlight bottlenecks, reduce change failure rates, and support continuous improvement. All this leads to better outcomes and happier teams.

Jira: Offers Burndown Charts and Sprint Tracking

If you’re already using Jira for project management, you’ve got access to some excellent built-in tools for tracking Scrum metrics. Jira’s burndown charts help you visualize the remaining work in a sprint and keep your team on track to meet sprint goals. Sprint tracking features let you monitor progress and adjust plans when necessary.

Jira’s integrations with other tools and its flexibility make it a popular choice for agile teams. You can easily customize workflows and track everything from backlog items to sprint retrospectives. While Jira requires some setup to leverage its full potential, it’s a solid choice for teams wanting detailed sprint progress data.

Trello: Provides Simple Boards for Progress Visualization

If you need a straightforward, visual approach to tracking progress, Trello is a fantastic option. Trello’s kanban-style boards are perfect for organizing tasks, tracking WIP, and keeping the entire team in sync. Drag-and-drop functionality makes it easy to update task statuses, and you can add custom labels, due dates, and checklists for additional clarity.

While Trello may lack advanced metrics tracking, it’s ideal for teams that value simplicity and collaboration. It’s beneficial for smaller teams or those new to agile methodologies.

Wrapping It Up: Leverage Scrum Metrics Correctly

This article outlines essential Scrum metrics and how to use them to improve productivity and team morale.

The starting point, though, is tracking them and then interpreting them correctly.

Axify can help you with both issues. Our dashboards are intuitive and comprehensive, and we also offer hands-on team support and mentoring to help you make the right changes.

Ready to see how Axify can transform your team's performance and simplify your workflow with real-time insights? Book a demo today and take the first step toward smarter, more efficient development!