Some Examples of Better

After my post on the Definition of Better yesterday, I was asked to provide some examples of answers to the first 2 questions:

1. What does better look like for our team and in our current context?
2. How will we know if we have improved? That is, how will we know if we won the game?

Here are some:

• Better quality code, less defects leaking to production
• Faster, shorter time to production for a feature
• Better features that our users need, increased new feature usage
• Less drag caused by poor quality, reduced effort spent on production support
• Bigger addressable market, reduce feature set gap for MEA and SEA small businesses markets
• More independence, reduced number of dependencies on other teams per feature
• More reliable delivery, reduced standard deviation of story lead time (or range of sprint velocity, as another example)
• More capacity, increased velocity

None of them are correct or incorrect, they just represent different business situations facing teams at a time in their journey. They are not forever, as the situation will change and it will demand a different response, a different type of better.