An aspect’s optimum is what it’s like when the system is most fit for purpose — when it best helps the company achieve its vision and goals. To determine it, ask yourself: “For this aspect, what would best serve the company?”

The optimum must be practical. The system operates in a specific business and technology landscape with constraints, expectations, and obligations. Even with ample time and funds, there’s a limit to what would be practical. The optimum must also be relevant. Even if you draw inspiration from industry stars, what does your company need from your system? What would matter most to your company’s success? That ideal might not be perfect, cheapest, or fastest.

• When rating an aspect, be careful not to let noticeable outliers bias you. Examples of outliers: the one team that frequently deploys to production (while other teams don’t), the two product people who always talk about outcomes (while others focus primarily on populating a backlog), the one team that spends forever in inefficient meetings (while other teams move on).
• While this type of assessment is admittedly subjective, do try to be as neutral as possible. That may be harder the more you’re invested in the system. Consider this angle: What would an independent outsider, who knows your system well, say?

Review the six ratings using the following prompts, and adjust as necessary:

• Did you rate each aspect as it’s defined above, and independently of the other aspects? For example, the observation “We deliver releases once a year, and that’s not frequent enough” might make throughput “far” while consistency is “near” (and you could be quite cost-efficient about the annual release).
• Do you believe you were as neutral and critical as you could be?
• Did you consider actual results and behaviours, rather than how people talk about them?

Note: If your analysis reveals that the system optimizes for some aspects at the expense of others, that’s useful information; it doesn’t mean you’ve rated them incorrectly. An example of that is when cost-efficiency is poor due to excessive switching of direction and focus (= high adaptability) that results in a lot of abandoned work.

Take heart. Getting to a great fitness-for-purpose is a long journey even when the stars align. Acknowledge the successes and positives in your journey so far. As you look to improve the fitness, the next page will show you where to concentrate your efforts.