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Andrew Stewart Gibson edited this page Feb 9, 2018 · 13 revisions

Quotes

"When performance is measured, performance improves. When performance is measured and reported, the rate of improvement accelerates." - T. S. Monson

"If you can't measure it, you can't improve it." - P. Drucker

As software developers, why should we care about productivity?

Seasoned software developers know that the word "productivity" often denotes a measurement of some sort which has been defined by a manager in a well meaning but misguided attempt to troubleshoot problems with software product delivery.

Problems in delivery often increase exponentially as quality is compromised by a lack of technical leadership, or in an attempt to ameliorate concerns about short-term deadlines. These problems are particularly insidious due to a lack of insight into the long-term implications of short-term tactics.

The upshot of this is two-fold:

  1. We need to track our performance, because our understanding as software development professionals is critical to picking the right indicators.
  2. By reporting progress and identifying problems, we give non-technical managers a good source of data when making difficult decisions about troubleshooting a failing project or team.

Hello you Agile people

What's the biggest missing piece of Agile? Sprint boards? Iterations? Pair programming?

We think it's the last part of the last "principle" of Agile Software Development: 1

"At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its behavior accordingly."

The real power of Agile can only be realised if the team is improving itself over time. But, that's by no means an easy trick to pull off. Many businesses see development teams as a vehicle for delivering software - limited by the amount of money available to invest in hiring and motivating engineers. The idea that a team can autonomously improve itself over time sounds like it's too good to be true. Restructuring and time management techniques are sometimes tried. Teams are distrupted by attempts to reconfigure assignments.

What if you could demonstrate that your team is a cohesive, self-improving unit? That would go a long way to establishing trust in the value and reliability of your team as a longer-term part of the company. Our software is designed to assist in achieving that vision by helping to:

  1. Measure improvement over time
  2. Communicate the good (and the bad) effectively
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