2023-08-22 08:30:06
Measuring, tracking, and benchmarking developer productivity has long been considered a black box. It doesn’t have to be that way.” This is how the global management consultancy begins McKinsey in Yes, you can measure software developer productivity … “Compared to other critical business functions, such as sales or customer operations, software development is always underrated. The ingrained belief of many in technology is that it can’t be done right, and that in any case , only trained engineers have enough knowledge to evaluate the performance of their peers.
“However, that status quo is no longer sustainable”
“All C-suite leaders who are not engineers or have been in management for a long time will need an introduction to the software development process and how it is evolving,” McKinsey advises companies starting a developer productivity initiative. . “Evaluate your systems.
Because developer productivity has generally not been measured at the level necessary to identify opportunities for improvement, most companies’ technology stacks will require a potentially extensive reconfiguration. For example, to measure test coverage (the extent to which areas of code have been adequately tested), a development team needs to equip their code base with a tool that can track code executed during a test run.”
Before you get too hopeful of McKinsey’s silver bullet tips for developer productivity in 2023, consider that Googling for “find a tool that can track code executed during a test run” will take you back to the tools of COBOL test coverage from the 80s that offered It is kind of ability and articles over 40 years old that offered similar advice ( 1 , 2 , 3 ). A cynic might also suggest considering McKinsey’s track record which has had some notable flaws .
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