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Measuring Individual Engineer Productivity

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Measuring Individual Engineer Productivity

DEFINITION:

Individual engineer productivity is extremely difficult to measure.  It is not simply looking at a single metric and then stack ranking based off of that metric.  By definition, software engineers often spend their time working on branches that do not end up merged into production.  So simply looking at PRs or commits often doesn’t take into account the work done on these “algorithm building” branches.  Nor does it account for the work done by engineers reviewing and assisting others.  Additionally there may be times where a lead engineer or architect is asked to spend time optimizing code or assisting in design work.  Bottom line it is very hard to measure individual engineer productivity or effectiveness by looking at numbers.

Metrics do provide directional guidance in determining if an engineer needs help, is overwhelmed or for some unknown reason is delivery less work than their norm.

ROLES:

  • Engineering Manager

  • Director of Engineering

     

RECOMMENDED USAGE:

  • Monthly, Quarterly, On Demand

     

ANALYSIS ACTIVITIES:

 

 Monitoring Developer Productivity

 

  • Navigate to Reports (note: the Developer Productivity report is only available to administrators in paid accounts)

  • Select the metric you want to include on the Developer Productivity report

    • Coding Efficiency

    • Commit Created

    • Issue Points Resolved

    • PR Size

    • Review Activity

    • Feedback Rounds

  • Create the report

     

What to look for? / What to do?

  1. When reviewing individual delivery over time, the key is consistency.  Individual delivery metrics should be about the same or trending upwards.  

  2. However, if you see something such as points or coding efficiency heading in the wrong direction, it is a worthwhile endeavor to check with the engineer on why??

    • If merited, track key engineer metrics over time with the engineer.

  3. But overall - recognize that metrics only provide part of the picture and engineer’s influence often cannot be measured using numbers.

  4. Do not hide the metrics from the individual engineer, include them in 1:1s as appropriate, but let them know that they are not being evaluated solely based on metrics.