How to measure developer productiveness (and how not to)
Credit: NESA by Makers
I cringe when growth groups notify me that their organisation would make them capture several hours in Jira Software package, Azure DevOps, or regardless of what agile administration tool they are working with.
Capturing hours is comprehensible and frequently necessary for professional services organisations, which normally cost purchasers on a time and components contract. But for most organisations, picking out accounting metrics to quantify advancement productivity is an anti-sample carried more than from command and command administration procedures.
There is a extensive checklist of other creation metrics that are also problematic. Calculating efficiency by traces of code done? Which is a very good way to inspire improvement groups to bury the organisation with technological credit card debt from bloated codebases. Measuring the quantities of consumer tales or story factors shipped? That is just inquiring builders to crack down options into a lot more stories or inflate their story level estimates.
Figuring out the amount of releases done is a action in a much better course, but that metric also requires clarification. Creation releases that introduce problems, cause key incidents, or provide poor close-person ordeals should be tagged in a different way than thriving deployments.
Plainly, measuring computer software enhancement productiveness is fraught with problems. One particular of the specialists I spoke with about them, Sagar Bhujbal, who is vice president of technological know-how at Macmillan Understanding, warned that deciding on the improper metrics can hurt team morale:

Developer productiveness ought to not be calculated by the quantity of mistakes, delayed delivery, or incidents. It leads to unneeded angst with enhancement teams that are often below strain to supply more abilities more quickly and far better. Alternatively, give psychological security and constantly align the working framework and boost engineering procedures.
In this short article, we’ll study how productivity actions can be used to software program developers and development groups not only to improve (and not hurt) their productiveness and morale, but also to improve organization outcomes.
Really do not use advancement productivity metrics to assess effectiveness
I’m a powerful proponent of capturing enhancement and devops KPIs and metrics to generate advancements in approach, excellent, and indeed, productiveness. The major issue is when organisations equate productivity actions with team or particular person performance goals. The difficulty is that equating productivity with efficiency with out good context often leads to undesirable behaviors, these as:
- Developing a lot more capabilities that push little business enterprise effect
- Releasing additional software package with no factoring threat, protection, quality, and operational impacts
- Innovating devoid of a realised path to production for successful experiments
For that reason, every time I am speaking to human methods or speaking about the overall functionality of a application development team, I strive to address a broader set of steps beyond productiveness.
Use development productiveness steps to support the business enterprise
So exactly where can productiveness steps be applied to software program growth groups to boost business enterprise outcomes? Especially, productiveness improvements should really aid companies improve revenue, strengthen close-consumer knowledge, improve high quality, decrease costs, enable innovation, supply strategic abilities, make improvements to collaboration, generate efficiencies, simplify entry to info, or minimize risks.
Software enhancement (and IT in standard) is usually a contributor to these company results, and the outcome-based mostly KPIs must established the context for any software improvement (and IT) metrics. The operational side of these KPIs need to be metrics on how efficient the team has been offering against said values and standards.
There is a rising physique of know-how on these metrics. Below are some illustrations:
- Software package enhancement metrics that make any difference right now contain agile metrics like cycle time and team velocity and creation metrics like indicate time to repair service
- Some clever efficiency metrics concentration on behaviors this sort of as code assessments done, documentation prepared, and discussions experienced with other people that capture productivity, high-quality, and collaboration
- Comparing worth-insert activities these types of as software program style, testing, and integrations as opposed to non-price-insert functions like configuring environments, squabbling above implementation challenges, or composing new code to determine out how existing code is effective
When considering some of these productiveness actions, it is truly worth assessing the deltas as opposed to the present metrics. When groups boost velocity and cycle situations, or reduce the defect escape level and mean time to mend, then the team’s productivity is probably improving.
Use improvement productiveness measures to make improvements to efficiency
A single of the aims of measuring productiveness should really be optimising investments that produce productivity improvements. Investments that assist application enhancement groups focus additional time and electrical power on fixing prioritised business difficulties slide into this class. Some illustrations:
- Automating deployments with CI/CD rather of executing them manually
- Standardising environments with infrastructure-as-code (IaC) and containers to minimise manual configurations and decrease defects tied to process differences
- Automating regression assessments so that developers correct bugs during the progress procedure and invest significantly less time investigating and correcting defects found in manufacturing
Macmillan Learning’s Bhujbal notes the importance of workforce behaviours and resources that impact productivity. “Intangible steps like much less friction and seamless collaboration with organization departments, and optimising applications will finally assistance accomplish the ideal and well timed results.”
Productivity metrics should really concentration on company outcomes
Martin Davis, a seasoned CIO with Southern Organization Providers, also stresses concentrating on business value and outcomes:

The far more IT can use enterprise metrics to evaluate its productivity, the more easily senior management can fully grasp the benefit. I would constantly check out to measure our progress productivity in phrases of included capabilities or company complications solved and ideally test to get greenback figures for the included benefit. By doing this, you can switch the dialogue from IT as a price tag to IT as a price provider.”
Ramki Ramaswamy, vice president of IT, technologies, and integrations at JetBlue, agrees with Davis that development productiveness should really be a element of price shipped, and he adds chance removing as a second variable.
“Development productivity is usually claimed in hrs or defects or dollars,” he said, “but it must preferably be calculated in price (return, prospect, operational personal savings) per greenback used versus threat (security, option) of doing practically nothing.”
The assistance of Ramaswamy and Davis is consistent with what I really feel is the most essential agile KPI. Eventually, teams should really first measure small business results and then qualify them with metrics that illustrate qualified behaviours. Presenting KPIs that merge results and shipping and delivery skills enable reply the who, what, why, and how to provide software of superior good quality. These KPIs are far a lot more significant than focusing on a bunch of reduced-level metrics.
At the time these KPIs are described, know-how and method improvements obtain a lot more context and meaning for each software program builders and the business. For instance:
- A enhancement team requested to enhance client gratification metrics as a enterprise consequence could elect to aim on improving the necessarily mean time to restore problems and the defect escape prices
- As advancement groups demonstrate enhancements to these metrics, they ought to convey wherever they commit in efficiency improvements this sort of as automation, creating documentation, or lowering specialized credit card debt
- As progress groups deliver enhancements, they should really measure customer gratification and report on their picked metrics
KPIs that incorporate organization outcomes and developer productiveness metrics assistance reply the query, “Is the staff delivering on prioritised business results even though enhancing their efficiency?” Specified that groups simply cannot enhance every thing at after, organisations should look to winner teams that make prudent conclusions that produce results whilst improving efficiency.
