Want to bring in delivery excellence in to your teams, measure what matters!
More organisations are getting back the focus on how to improve the delivery quality of the engineering teams, especially with the globally disparate engineering communities within an organisation.
The much needed focus on the operational efficiency is definitely something that we are seeing to be the top priority for the leadership teams in many organisations.
The key Software development metrics are set to assess the efficiency and effectiveness of software development processes. These metrics are imperative to improve the excellence of the software delivery, enhancing the quality of that software being developed, and reducing overall costs.
Let us focus on some of the important software development metrics and see how they can help software development teams achieve their goals.
Delivery focussed Metrics
Code Coverage
Code coverage is a percentage measure of the degree to which the source code of a software program is executed when a unit test suite is run. A program with high test coverage has more of its source code executed during testing, which suggests it has a lower chance of containing undetected software bugs compared to a program with low test coverage
Velocity
Velocity is a metric that measures the amount of work a team can complete in a given time frame. It is typically measured in story points or units of work. Velocity can help teams to plan their work more effectively, estimate the amount of time required to complete a project, and track progress over time. This is also a good measure of how consistent the teams are delivering, helping in bringing in predictability as to when to expect a team’s delivery when a feature is assigned.
Cycle Time
Cycle time is the time it takes for a feature or bug to go from the planning stage to development to test to production. It is an important metric because it helps to identify bottlenecks in the development process and improve overall efficiency. By reducing cycle time, teams can deliver features and bug fixes more quickly, which can improve customer satisfaction and increase revenue. An exercise of value stream mapping can help us look at the bottlenecks in the flow.
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Lead Time
The time it takes to complete a feature or bug from the time it is requested to the time it is delivered, is called as the Lead time. It is an important metric because it helps to identify the overall efficiency of the development process. By reducing lead time, teams can deliver features and bug fixes more quickly, which can improve customer satisfaction and increase revenue.
Defect Density
Defect density is the number of defects per unit of code. It is an important metric because it helps to identify the overall quality of the code. By reducing defect density, teams can improve the overall quality of the software and reduce the amount of time spent on bug fixes, thus reducing the cost of development.
Customer Focused Metrics
Customer Satisfaction
Customer satisfaction is a metric that measures how satisfied customers are with the software. It is an important metric because it helps to identify areas where the software can be improved. By improving customer satisfaction, teams can increase customer retention and revenue.
Churn Rate
Churn rate is the percentage of customers who stop using the software. It is an important metric because it helps to identify areas where the software is not meeting customer needs. By reducing churn rate, teams can increase customer retention and revenue.
In summary, measuring software development metrics are an important approach for measuring the efficiency and effectiveness of software development processes. By measuring these key matrices such as code coverage, velocity, cycle time, lead time, defect density, customer satisfaction, and churn rate, organisations can identify areas for improvement and work to continuously improve the quality of the software. By focusing on these metrics, software development teams can also increase efficiency, reduce costs, and improve customer satisfaction, which can ultimately lead to increased revenue and success.
Product engineering, delivery, technology and business leader || Building products for banks and fintechs/neobanks
1 年Nice article Nayan Naidu. If the lead time from developer box to production is a few hours, that shows the kind of people, processes, practices, architecture and tools you have. It's a great metric. One of my other favorites is MTTR (mean time to recovery from a breakdown) demonstating your fault tolerance
Good one Nayan Naidu ! I would add ‘Predictably’ as part of Delivery focused metrics. This is another important metric which helps team, stakeholders to see what was Planned vs Delivered work in a given time frame and how they trend over time.
CxO, CDAO, Entrepreneur, Board member
1 年Measurement help to quantify pain points and take corrective actions. We need to bring rigor in delivery process to get faster to business outcomes.