How to Avoid Bullshit Metrics - Noel Warnell

In our Back to the Basics of Agile Coaching series, we are returning to the foundations that truly make great coaches effective.

About the session

In this session, we will explore how teams often become trapped measuring isolated metrics that create false confidence, local optimisation and misleading narratives.

Using practical examples from delivery, product, operational, customer and commercial metrics, we will look at how to view data through multiple lenses and identify the blind spots hiding inside your current reporting.

Because metrics on their own are rarely the truth. The real insight comes from understanding the patterns between them.

Participant outcomes

By the end of this session, attendees will be able to:

• Recognise common ways teams misuse metrics and accidentally create misleading reporting
• Understand the difference between measuring activity, delivery performance and actual value creation
• Explore multiple lenses of measurement including flow, delivery, customer, operational efficiency, culture and commercial impact
• Identify gaps and blind spots in the metrics currently used inside their teams or organisations
• Learn how combinations of metrics often reveal stronger signals than isolated numbers alone
• Shift conversations away from vanity metrics and towards evidence-based decision making
• Leave with a practical framework for evaluating whether their current metrics are helping or simply creating false confidence

About Noel Warnell

Noel’s agile journey started in 2011 and he hasn’t looked back. 14 years later, dozens of organisations and a handful of job titles, he is an experienced agile practitioner. He runs a consulting company NOW Agile, which focuses on partnering with leaders and founders to create more productive, efficient and profitable teams.