What are the Performance Metrics for the Development Stage

Remote and hybrid work is getting popular by the day, with 16% of global employees working remotely and 62% opting for hybrid work. Gartner claims that in 2022, 31% of all workers worldwide will be remote. The trend gives workers the flexibility they need and also the freedom to spend time productively instead of commuting or chatting with coworkers. However, executives and project managers are getting anxious as they can't overview developers' work as they could on-site.??

Let's talk about performance metrics, whether you should use them with your team and why they might be ineffective in the end.?

Numerative Metrics: Getting out of Fashion

If we say metrics, we are talking numbers, right? Not so literary. Developer performance was long counted by completed tasks, lines of code, number of commits, fixed bugs, and features done. My favorite one is computer activity metrics ?? The quantity over quality isn't anywhere close to good metrics. Why? The number of lines of code doesn't matter, as software companies should care about simple but effective code. Fixing the most minor bugs doesn't guarantee quality apps. If there is an unhealthy work environment that uses these, developers are devoted to finding loopholes rather than focusing on important decisions.?

Agile Process Metrics

These are the ones that we mainly use, and they have proven effective for teams of different sizes. These ones measure performance in the process of development and changes if needed. Sprints helped the team concentrate on needed functionality while also seeing the whole picture. With the help of Agile metrics, we plan and make decisions about process improvement. What they don't include is success or value added. For that, you'll need to add another formula. The critical components in Agile metrics:

1. Lead time - the general time needed to deliver the final product to the client. What does this one show? Looking at days of lead time, we can correct the process and estimate expectations correctly.?
2. Cycle time - time to make a specific change to the software and deliver it into production. It's similar to the 1st one but more specific.
3. Velocity - the average amount of "units" of software the team completes in one "sprint." It's a team metric, but you can observe contributions made by each team member to do the task in the shortest time period. Also, it is seen as controversial (a few types of manipulations here) and better used by more experienced teams.?
4. Work-in-progress - number of tasks in progress. By using these metrics, we control the processes and decide if some need adjusting. Potentially look for bottlenecks and cost loss.?
5. Team health - types and number of distributed items to the team members. In case someone takes one more workload than they can handle. Sometimes, it's worth assigning more tasks to individual employees to see how they perform (willingly, of course).

So, Agile metrics might benefit team effort, but they don't apply to individuals. To access the results of mentioned parameters, communicate with people and get their perspective (like anonymous polls after sprints). Also, self-assessments made by individual team members will help a lot. The one that you could use is a Scrum checklist made by Henrik Kniberg.

DORA Metrics

Metrics that were created for DevOps but might help the software team. What are they suitable for? To break down projects and processes into smaller, more measurable pieces, establish the proper code review process and evaluate team performance. Before metrics appeared, a team put together by Google did research on what makes a high-performing team different from a low-performing team.

There are only 4 metrics: Deployment Frequency, Mean Lead Time for Changes, Mean Time to Recover and Change Failure Rate.

• Deployment Frequency - the number of times you change production. Probably the most important one here as it lets us see what changes caused issues to the software. The key is to make small changes so that it's easier to tackle them.
• Mean Lead Time for Change - the estimated time from the moment the developer starts working on a change to the moment that it is shipped to production. This metric is useful when changes are relatively small, and we identify the most prolonged processes and ways to optimize them.
• Mean Time to Recover - time to detect the issue and address it. The only advice here is to use this metric along with the other three, as it can become "hacks to keep the system alive and running."?
• Change Failure Rate - a ratio of the number of deployments to the number of failures. However, it's tricky as you need to define "failure." In every project, this will be unique. And don't concentrate on the general amount of failures; look at the ratio.

Customer Satisfaction Rate?

No matter how successful the project is, you're dealing with clients. So, one excellent performance metric of a developer or development team is the client's observations. Giving feedback is equally important (if not more) to you and your team. Every company comes up with its methods, but qualitative and quantitative assessments are essential metrics to the IT industry.?

Final Words

We've discussed a few metrics, but it's an endless topic. Sometimes combining them or changing your usual tactics could boost team performance. If there was a one-fits-all recipe to track a developer's performance, I'd be the first to try it. But until those times, let's use the tools and metrics we have and use.?