When you use an IT service company like Infopulse to increase the parameters of the business, it’s important to see the results. Needless to say, an unproductive group of developers will not be successful. But how is it possible to define the total productivity? In our article, we will provide you with effective metrics to define the productivity of the developing group. Check out if your people work effectively to improve your online business and lead you to money and success!
9 Metrics to Measure Productivity
Below, you will find 9 useful parameters (bullet points) you need to monitor if you want to analyze the software development group productivity. Please be informed these are the most important parameters that show the effectiveness of people’s work.
Lean and Agile Processes
Here are the first four parameters for lean and agile processes. With their help, it’s easy to define software quality and success. Pay your attention that the final numbers can show you the essential processes that need the biggest attention. They inform you about how to increase the current processes as well as help planning.
- Leadtime. This metric shows the time from the idea to the fully developed software. When you need to reduce the lead time, you have to decrease wait time and simplify the process of decision-making.
- Cycle time. This parameter shows time spent on making any change to your software and implementing this change into the process. For example, teams of developers who use continuous delivery, measure this value in minutes and seconds instead of days and months.
- Team velocity. This parameter shows how many units the developing group finishes within the one iteration. You can use this parameter for planning iterations. There are no reasons to compare these parameters because they are based on the non-objective evaluation.
- Number of opened and closed rates. This metric shows how many tickets are opened/closed within a particular period. Here the general direction is more important than numbers.
If you have measured the parameters above and discovered that some or all of them are out of range, it’s not a reason for panic. Just talk to the developers and let them find the cause of this problem and decide how they may fix it.
Of course, you cannot define any concrete causes from the numbers. But with the parameters, it’s easy to see things that need the biggest attention.
Production Analysis
Here are three more metrics that show your software group overall performance:
- MTBF. This metric shows the time between the two failures of software.
- MTTR. Thanks to this important parameter, you can see what time it takes to repair or recover after failure.
- App crash rate. This parameter shows the number of application failures divided by the number of its running.
You must understand that it’s impossible to see any individual features with these measurements. But remember the smaller values you get during the analysis, the better.
Of course, all the people wish software never fails but unfortunately, this is impossible. When software fails, needless to say, we want to save all the data and recover in the shortest time. Sometimes, it’s not easy to do, but it’s worth trying to improve software and measure productivity constantly.
Security Processes
Security is very important for software. Feel free to use the next parameters to analyze the quality of software security.
- MTTR. It’s the time passed between discovering the security violation and repairing the incident successfully. Just like the production metric we described above, this one should be measured over particular intervals of time. When you see this parameter is growing up smaller, it means the team of developers is becoming more effective and professional in fixing bugs.
- Endpoint incidents. This parameter shows the number of devices that got infected by a computer virus over a particular period.
Please be informed the smaller numbers you get in security measurements, the better quality of security you have.
Tips on Using Productivity Metrics
Of course, these metrics only give you specific numbers. Needless to say, your situation changes all the time, so you can’t be sure tomorrow the group will show the same productivity as it was today. But still, it’s possible to use effectively all nine metrics listed above. We suggest reading the tips below to define the effectiveness of your developing team without stress.
- Metrics only show you numbers without the entire story. Only your developing group can explain all the needed things.
- Don’t waste your time to compare the different values you’ve got. These numbers are quite important only for the current moment.
- You can measure almost everything, but it’s not possible to pay attention to almost everything, so set the right priorities.
- Metrics for your successful business lead to software improvements.
- Every feature you measure adds some value to the whole process.
- Always define those things that are important for the current moment only.
Tools to Define the Productivity of the Developing Group
After we have provided you with the main metrics, here are some great tools for measuring all the needed parameters:
- AppDynamics. With this product, it’s possible to control your app and see when someone is tapping, clicking, and swiping in it. The tool can be easily connected to your software to provide you with monitoring in real-time.
- Code Climate. This tool helps to save the quality of the source code. Apart from this, it’s easy to get various performance parameters like maintainability, quality, and test coverage of the product code.
- VSTS. With this wonderful tool, it’s possible to increase the speed of software projects development easily. With this app, you can track, maintain, and measure various parameters, including sprints, bugs, backlogs, velocity, user stories, etc.
As you can see, your team of developers’ productivity can be measured accurately and improved. We hope our tips were helpful to increase the productivity of your developing group and keep all the parameters under control. Of course, with the measurements, it’s impossible to receive the full situation, but it’s quite important to get this information for analyzing and discussing with your group.
