An Intellyx BrainBlog for Faros.ai
Every enterprise in the world wants to maximize performance: delivering for customers better, faster, and cheaper than the competition.
Further, software company executives love to repeat the mantra that “every company is a software company” as often as possible.
Therefore, it stands to reason that management consulting firms would seek to apply their MBA statistical models to maximize performance of the software-producing function of any enterprise.
The concept of measuring the performance of software development teams is nothing new, but it recently returned to the public consciousness with a little controversy thanks to this recent McKinsey piece titled: “Yes, you can measure software developer productivity.”
Implement their methodology, the article says, and developers could realize a 20-to-30 percent reduction in customer-reported defects, a 20 percent improvement in employee experience scores, and a 60 percent improvement in customer satisfaction.
Sounds incredible! With results like that, why hasn’t everyone already jumped on their proposed measurement bandwagon?
Why measure developer productivity?
Compared to other process-oriented industries, the software industry has been rather undisciplined in its approach to measuring results. An ineffable ‘tiger team’ mentality arose, where we expected one genius developer or an expert team to lock themselves in the office with a couple pizzas and some Jolt Cola, and hammer out brilliant code.
This ‘code cowboy’ mentality predictably led to failure and heartbreak, as two-thirds of software projects consistently failed to meet budgets and timelines.
CEOs and CFOs were constantly frustrated by a lack of accountability. They wanted engineering orgs to take a page from the discipline of industrial supply chain optimization, so software development could realize the benefits of KPI measurements, Kanban-style workflows, and process automation that built everything else in our modern economy…
Read this slightly controversial take on developer measurement here at Faros.ai (no registration required): https://www.faros.ai/blog/does-measuring-software-engineering-performance-actually-deliver-value
