Human Insights for Measuring Developer Productivity

🛠️ Measuring Developer Productivity: It’s Complex but Crucial! 🚀 Measuring software developer productivity is one of the toughest challenges. It's a task that requires more than just traditional metrics. I remember when my organization was buried in metrics like lines of code, velocity points, and code reviews. I quickly realized these didn’t provide the full picture. 📉 Lines of code, velocity points, and code reviews? They offer a snapshot but not the complete story. More code doesn’t mean better code, and velocity points can be misleading. Holistic focus is essential: As companies become more software-centric, it’s vital to measure productivity accurately to deploy talent effectively. 🔍 System Level: Deployment frequency and customer satisfaction show how well the system performs. A 25% increase in deployment frequency often correlates with faster feature delivery and higher customer satisfaction. 👥 Team Level: Collaboration metrics like code-review timing and team velocity matter. Reducing code review time by 20% led to faster releases and better teamwork. 🧑💻 Individual Level: Personal performance, well-being, and satisfaction are key. Happy developers are productive developers. Tracking well-being resulted in a 30% productivity boost. By adopting to this holistic approach transformed our organization. I didn’t just track output but also collaboration and individual well-being. The result? A 40% boost in team efficiency and a notable rise in product quality! 🌟 🚪 The takeaway? Measuring developer productivity is complex, but by focusing on system, team, and individual levels, we can create an environment where everyone thrives. Curious about how to implement these insights in your team? Drop a comment or connect with me! Let’s discuss how we can drive productivity together. 🤝 #SoftwareDevelopment #Productivity #TechLeadership #TeamEfficiency #DeveloperMetrics

Expanding on some comments I left on Fernando Villalba's post earlier today, continuing to pick apart the McKinsey report on developer productivity. Measuring developer productivity should never be a goal. IMPROVING developers' ability to create value for the organization — THAT is the goal. A lot of time has been spent trying to figure out how to measure the actions of teams and individuals to achieve that goal, but as I suggested in my comment, that's upside down. Like the post says, attempting to quantify the value created by an engineer is folly, and so is using output metrics (LOC, PRs) as a proxy. If you actually want to increase the productivity of your developers, figure out what gets in their way, and figure out how to get rid of it (or, paraphrasing Otto Hilska, "In order to be fast, just get rid of everything that makes you slow.") The challenge with this is that it flips the script and shifts an uncomfortable gaze from the individual and team level and onto the organization itself. It forces you to examine the ways in which the business is (or isn't) helping developers do their best work. Individual developers often don't have the leverage, skills, or political capital to drive significant process change or tooling overhauls, but that's often exactly what's called for. The real wins come when you are willing to examine how the business could be doing more to help developers stay in flow — because developers who stay in flow will feel (and be) more productive and more satisfied with their job to boot.

Everyone’s chasing productivity using AI. But are we even measuring what matters? Talk to most engineering leaders right now, and you’ll hear some version of this: “We need to do more with less. Faster releases, tighter budgets, leaner teams.” But behind the dashboards and metrics, something deeper is playing out. A recent look across hundreds of engineering orgs surfaced some hard truths: •Over 60% of leaders say their teams improve both revenue and cost—but can’t tie that back to specific work •43% say at least a quarter of their developers are burned out •And nearly 25% track productivity… without any formal system at all We’re seeing the rise of metrics without meaning. And productivity theater that looks good on paper but hides inefficiencies, broken workflows, and burnout. So what actually moves the needle? Here’s what the best teams are doing right now: 1. Connecting work to business outcomes Not just measuring story points, but asking: does this reduce cost or drive growth? 2. Elevating developer experience (DevEx) 82% of leaders say DevEx is as important—or more important—than pure output. Environments that support creative flow outperform those that just chase velocity. 3. Getting serious about burnout Nearly a third of companies only detect burnout through attrition. If your metric is “who just quit,” it’s already too late. 4. Using AI where it makes sense Over 40% of orgs are experimenting with AI for code, process insights, or collaboration—yet many still don’t know how to measure its actual impact. What’s clear is this: productivity is not about squeezing teams harder. It’s about building a system where engineers can move fast without breaking themselves. And where output is tied to outcomes-not just effort. Ask your team one simple question: Does our work align with what the business actually cares about? If the answer’s unclear, that’s where the work begins. What do you think? #EngineeringLeadership #DevEx #Productivity #TechStrategy #AI #MetaShift #SoftwareDevelopment

An excellent post on the DevEx Framework from Laura Tacho. Several critical points on strategies for improving developmer productivity. 1. Start by talking to developers to understand the points of friction in the flow of work from their perspective. 2. Use surveys, structured interviews, face to face conversations, or whatever works to get the information you need, but make sure you collect the right information. 3. A great list of useful perceptual metrics that can be gathered to triage where you need to focus is included. Start here if you don’t know what to measure and ditch activity and output metrics in favor of these more engineering specific metrics. They give you concrete things you can focus on that the developers care about. 3. Once you have a focus area for improvement, start bringing in system tooling and metrics. You’ll need this to confirm your survey findings on the ground independently from the perceptual metrics. These are also how you will track incremental progress on improvements in real time as you make changes. 4. Once you’ve seen improvements in your system metrics go back and check developer perceptions on a cadence that provides regular dopamine hits to all concerned. 5. It’s not an improvement unless your customer (the developers) think it is an improvement. 6. Rinse and repeat. This is very much in line with how I recommend tackling dev productivity measurements in The Polaris Advisor program. Highly recommended! #dx #developerproductivity #softwaredevelopment #metrics

The only effective way to measure developer productivity is by measuring developer experience. Nothing else really works. Number of pull requests or deployments are at best fuzzy and at worst misrepresentative. A better signal: whether developers *feel* productive or not. Then layer on the sentiment of peers and managers. Cycle times and lead times don’t tell you how effective teams are – more so just how they shape their work. A better signal: asking developers about their workflows and points of friction that slow them down. I know not all agree with this but I've worked with hundreds of 250+ eng organizations where DevEx is the only approach that has worked.

Are you planning on measuring developer productivity in 2024? 🚨 Here's your reminder to think again. Focusing on raw developer output (lines of code/tickets closed) is a futile pursuit. These are poor proxies for productivity and measuring performance against them will incentivize gaming of metrics and drive burnout. There is a better way! 💡 Instead of trying to measure nebulous outputs, focus on inputs. Create a developer experience that promotes high performance: 1️⃣ Flow state – Does your work environment allow developers sufficient time for deep focused work or is it filled with countless interruptions? 2️⃣ Feedback Loops – Is your environment structured to provide consistent and rapid feedback on development output? (Effective and frequent code review, rapid release cycles, customer feedback etc.) 3️⃣ Cognitive Load – How hard is it to get things done on your team? (setting up developer environments, ramping up with documentation, releasing, getting specs reviewed etc). Do these simple tasks easy/fast or do they carry a high cognitive load? 4️⃣ Make something people want. Are you working on the right things? Countless hours of development time and energy are spent building products and features nobody wants or asked for. Are you promoting a process where ideas are continuously validated with customers before and throughout development? See the comments for more on this topic.

📊💻 Exploring the Trade-offs in Developer Productivity Metrics 💻📊 Measuring productivity is not just about counting lines of code or tracking task completion. It's a nuanced trade-off. Metrics can drive efficiency, but they can also overshadow the creative and innovative aspects that are crucial in development. Balancing quantitative measurements with qualitative assessments ensures that while we strive for productivity, we don't compromise on the quality and ingenuity that truly propel our products forward. I thought the last paragraph summed it up perfectly: What’s the alternative? Listening & thinking. The best executives I’ve worked with used data, yes, but they always had direct connection to the work. They had a diverse group of individual contributors they talked to on a regular basis. Trusted relationships let them identify misaligned & perverse incentives. It may seem like scaling requires interacting with abstractions like charts & graphs, but relying solely on abstractions puts you at the mercy of whoever creates those abstractions. #DeveloperProductivity #TechInsights #software #softwareengineering #softwaredevelopment #leadership https://lnkd.in/ggJp3GJf