Published: 28 February 2023
Software engineering leaders seek to measure and improve the productivity of their developers, but this is notoriously hard to do in practice. Value-based productivity metrics will give teams the tools and information they need for self-improvement.
Conventional definitions and measurements of productivity — which seem obvious — are not helpful, but stakeholders continue to demand them and software engineering leaders often do not know how to respond to these demands.
Although examples of productivity metrics for software development exist, they do not capture a true, actionable definition of software engineering productivity.
A bewildering range of practices and tools promise to improve productivity. Many software engineering leaders do not know which ones work and which ones to tell their teams to use.
Leaders responsible for software engineering practices should:
Respond to demands for conventional productivity metrics by providing
Analysts:
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