The Value-Driven Team: The Agile Pulse Audit

The Agile Pulse Audit: Your 2-Week Sprint Pilot

Stop managing by hope. Start managing by measurable value.

As described in our 2026 State of Agile Metrics Report, many organizations suffer from a hidden Transparency Gap. High Story Point velocity often masks low actual business value — sometimes by a factor of 9× between teams. This low-risk Sprint Pilot gives you an objective, fact-based snapshot of one agile team in just one sprint (2 weeks).

• Fixed price: €1,950 (all-inclusive)

• Duration: 2-3 weeks (one sprint)

• Minimal team effort — runs mostly in the background -

• Delivered by Nesma President & ISBSG expert Drs. Harold van Heeringen!

What the Sprint Pilot Includes

• Full functional sizing of delivered work using Easy Functional Sizing (EFS) – NESMA/ISO compliant Value Units

• Calculation of the 5 Core Performance Indices:

  • Productivity (Project Delivery Rate – hours per Value Unit)

  • Cost Efficiency (€ per Value Unit)

  • Delivery Speed (Value Units per calendar month)

  • Process Quality (Defects per 1,000 Value Units)

  • Value Density (Value Units per €1,000 spent)

• Peer-group benchmarking against 15,000+ ISBSG projects and our agile-specific dataset

• Identification of hidden capacity leaks (typically 20–40%)

• 1-page executive summary + detailed report + 90-day remediation roadmap

Why You Need This Now?

Every sprint you delay is another two weeks of 30%+ value leakage. Your team may be delivering clean code, but if they are 25% slower than the industry average, you are losing market responsiveness and budget efficiency every single day. The "refining-while-building" cycle is the most expensive way to deliver software; stop the drain on your resources before the next sprint planning.

Limited Opportunity

Because this audit involves a deep-dive analysis by a globally recognized expert and manual calibration against our database of 15,000+ projects, we can only accept three new team audits per month. To maintain the high-touch quality and precise functional sizing that the Agile Pulse Audit is known for, slots are filled on a first-come, first-served basis. Secure your spot now to ensure you don't fall further behind your peer leaders.

Exclusive Bonuses for Product Owners & Scrum Masters (free when you mention the 2026 State of Agile Metrics Report)

When you book your audit this month, you will receive these three implementation tools (valued at over €500) for free:

• The SMART DoR Checklist: A "gatekeeping" tool to ensure stories are ready for development, reducing loads of rework and directly targeting the productivity gap.

• The Jira Hygiene Taxonomy Template: A guide to reclassifying your board to stop "dark work" and clearly separate functional value from technical tasks.

• The "Blocker-First" Stand-up Protocol: A meeting script designed to shift ceremonies from status updates to aggressive impediment resolution for faster throughput.

The Agile Pulse Audit is designed to provide high-impact results with a "light-touch" approach, ensuring the team remains focused on delivery while the audit runs in the background.

The Agile Pulse Audit transforms "gut-feel" management into strategic certainty by quantifying the tangible business value your team produces relative to its industry peers and a comprehensive outside-in view on essential aspects like user story quality, best practices adoption and much more! In only 2 to 4 weeks you will be fully aware of the team performance in relation to your peers, and you'll know the specific areas where your team can or should improve!

For a fixed investment of €1,950, you receive the Full value of the Agile Pulse Audit and the associated Bonusses. This is really a no-brainer for any Product Owner and/or Scrum Master who is eager to improve value delivery transparency and maturity of their team.

How the Service Works

The audit follows a structured, data-driven methodology that moves from data extraction to industry benchmarking.

• Jira & Data Extraction: We analyze the team's Jira board to evaluate workflow maturity and identify "value leakage" caused by administrative inconsistencies.

• Functional Sizing (EFS): We utilize the Nesma Easy Functional Size (EFS) method to objectively measure the amount of business value delivered. This focuses on transaction types (EI and EO) and logical files to move past the "guesswork" of story points.

• Peer-Group Calibration: Your team's performance is anchored against a relevant peer group of similar industry projects (e.g., 760 Java-based financial projects) to provide an objective "outside-in" view.

• Metric Deep-Dive: We calculate five core Performance Indices: Productivity, Cost Efficiency, Delivery Speed, Process Quality, and the overall Value Index which show under- or overperformance against the industry peer group.

• We analyze the requirements (e.g. User stories in Jira or Azure DevOps) and assess quality and use of best practices and possible effect on rework and productivity.

• We analyze the way of working of the team and assess which best practices are adopted and which ones the team could benefit from when starting to use them.

• Strategic Roadmap: The process concludes with a targeted remediation plan, synthesizing the metrics into actionable observations and recommendations.

All this is delivered in a comprehensive report, starting with a 1-page management executive summary showing the main observations, results and recommendations. Then there are several chapters showing the detailed results of the audit, observations and recommendations to improve certain aspects.

Why Customer Involvement is "Really Low"

We understand that your team’s primary job is to build software, not to manage an audit. Our process is built to be non-intrusive.

• Remote Snapshot: The audit is a one-off benchmark that primarily uses existing data from your Jira environment, requiring no long-term monitoring commitment.

• Objective Analysis vs. Subjective Interviews: Unlike traditional consultancies that require hours of staff interviews, we use Easy Functional Sizing to analyze the actual flow of data and business value directly from the work produced.

• Minimal Meetings: Customer involvement is limited to a brief intake session with Product owner/Scrum Master for context and a final executive presentation of the roadmap.

• Founder-Led Execution: The audit is led by an expert with over 25 years of experience who handles the complex calibration and analysis, removing the need for the customer to facilitate the process.

• Automated Analysis: We use automatic tooling to measure the functional size delivered and the quality of the user stories.

Next Step: To secure one of our two monthly slots and stop the drain on your next sprint, fill in the form below and schedule your Introduction call through the form below!