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The goal of looking at Ability to Innovate (A2I) is to maximize the organization’s ability to deliver new capabilities and innovative solutions.

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Key Questions

Organizations should continually re-evaluate their A2I by asking:
  1. What prevents the organization from delivering new value?
  2. What prevents customers or users from benefiting from that innovation?

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Impediments to Innovation

A variety of things can impede a team from being able to deliver new capabilities and value:
  • Spending too much time fixing defects or reducing technical debt
  • Having to maintain multiple code branches or product versions
  • A complex or monolithic application architecture
  • Insufficient product-like environments to test on
  • Lack of operational excellence
  • Poor code management practices
  • Lack of decentralized decision-making
  • Inability to hire and inspire talented, passionate team members
As low-value features and systemic impediments accumulate, more budget and time are consumed maintaining the product or overcoming impediments, reducing its available capacity to innovate. In addition, anything that prevents users or customers from benefiting from innovation, such as hard-to-install software or lack of compelling capabilities, will also reduce A2I.

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Sample Metrics