"What should we measure to improve developer productivity?" is a decades-old problem for leaders with no clear solution.
There finally seems to be some level of consensus that output metrics like lines of code, # of PRs, and commits, are an ineffective approach.
Lean metrics like cycle time and lead time can be a helpful high-level diagnostic, but they're far from an indicator of effectiveness or productivity.
A new approach being adopted by many organizations is to focus on the actual experiences of developers... the things that slow them down or frustrate them... and turn these into measurements that guide improvement. I'm the founder of getdx.com where we're publishing research on this: http://paper.getdx.com
There finally seems to be some level of consensus that output metrics like lines of code, # of PRs, and commits, are an ineffective approach.
Lean metrics like cycle time and lead time can be a helpful high-level diagnostic, but they're far from an indicator of effectiveness or productivity.
A new approach being adopted by many organizations is to focus on the actual experiences of developers... the things that slow them down or frustrate them... and turn these into measurements that guide improvement. I'm the founder of getdx.com where we're publishing research on this: http://paper.getdx.com