Businesses establish specific development standards for application modernization to evaluate the software developer’s performance in a given timeframe. Based on these standards, developer productivity is evaluated. These metrics assist businesses in identifying ineffective workflows, tools or resources, and behavioral attributes that have an impact on developer productivity in a development space.
In this article, we will go through the methods, tips, and metrics to measure developer productivity. Moreover, we will discover a couple of ways to find how to improve the software developer’s productivity during the whole product development process.
What is developer productivity?
In the workplace, productivity simply refers to how much “work” is completed in a given amount of time. Developer productivity refers to a developer’s ability to develop high-quality software solutions that operate as planned and are simple to maintain in a reasonable timeframe. In simple words, developer productivity is the measure of the performance of a developer that represents how productive a software developer is in any given matrix or time frame.
What is SPACE?
The SPACE is a framework that captures the different aspects of productivity. Forsgren and her fellow researchers developed this framework that provides a better understanding of what parameters increase or decrease productivity in your business.
The SPACE framework measures developer productivity based on the five components. These components are satisfaction, performance activity, communication and collaboration, and efficiency.
What are the myths and misconceptions about developer productivity?
Over time, a lot of misconceptions surrounding programmer productivity have emerged. Below, we have listed several misconceptions about developer productivity. Recognizing these myths improves the understanding of productivity measurement.
Developer productivity can be measured using one metric
One of the most common myths about developer productivity is that businesses can effectively measure developer productivity using a single effective metric. There is no single metric that is enough to measure productivity because there are too many parameters that can differ by business and industry.
So, in practice, businesses can use several weighted combinations for measuring developer productivity, but these specific weights and metrics will differ depending on the working requirements.
Developer productivity is all about individual performance
Another misconception about productivity is that individual performance is important. The project’s success is dependent on more than the personal success of many people. Additionally, it depends on how well they collaborate.
Although individual performance is important, how well the team performs as a whole is also important in measuring productivity. It’s essential to use performance metrics that balance the needs of the organization, team, and developer.
Similar to a sports team, a player’s success is influenced by both their performance as well as the success of their team. but, if a developer solely makes improvements for their performance, it may reduce the team’s productivity.
Developer productivity is only based on developer tools and engineering systems
Developer productivity is strongly affected by both developer tools and workflows as well as by human factors like organizational culture and environmental factors. The important work required to maintain a healthy workplace and culture is frequently “invisible” to many individuals in an organization or to productivity metrics used for measuring developer productivity.
Measuring productivity is only helpful for managers
Another misconception is that developers feel that measuring productivity is not useful. They consider it something that only managers benefit from. However, metrics can use at the level of the person or team, either as an individual or collaborative effort.
What challenges you may face with measuring a developer’s productivity?
Software companies are constantly finding new ways to enhance their developers’ productivity. Instead of looking for the next big idea to increase productivity, you must learn about the critical challenges that you can face while measuring the productivity of a developer.
First, logical lines of code, where several actions can take place on a single line, differ from physical lines of code. Although adding extra comment lines is intended to make code easier to maintain, doing so will have the opposite effect. Parsimony and clarity frequently have trade-offs that are challenging to quantify with such a fundamental metric.
Second, some potential customer pain points may arise during measuring the developer’s productivity. Rapidly changing conditions, low developer productivity, lack of talent, no easy way to innovate, difficulty integrating, modern usage limitations, high cost of maintenance, scaling to growing business needs.
What approaches are helpful to measure a developer’s productivity?
You can use different approaches to measuring developer productivity that we will discuss in the rest of the section:
- QUANTS Metrics
- Input and output measurement
- SPACE Framework
- OKR Framework
QUANTS Metrics
You can measure the developer productivity using QUANTS metrics that are the combination of five core components: Quality of the code, Attention, measure intellectual difficulty, tempo and velocity, and developers’ satisfaction.
Input and output measurement
In the input and output approach, people focus on software development productivity. The number of working hours is an example of an input measure. But, there are several problems with this. One of the main problems is that people are unable to demonstrate their worth in this situation.
Programmers can’t perform well with long working hours, and it also reduces productivity. Developers can make more mistakes due to extensive workload development, which drives interpersonal issues, such as conflicts within teams. Instead of promoting an innovative culture, it creates a toxic workplace with low morale and nonexistent teamwork. Another issue that is comparable to this is the number of software releases.
SPACE framework
The important myth of the SPACE framework is that no single metric is enough to measure developers’ performance or productivity and, in turn, has created a multidimensional measure that incorporates all of these concepts. According to these researchers, the SPACE framework is a combination of different elements that we have listed below:
- S: Satisfaction and well-being
- P: Performance
- A: Activity
- C: Communication and collaboration
- E: Efficiency and flow
OKR Framework
The OKR framework is good for goal management and specifically works on the concept of objectives and key results. However, this is a very straightforward approach in which you can solve each problem by breaking it into manageable objectives and clearly stating the direction that represents the project’s success. Take a look at more details about how to measure software developers’ productivity.
How to improve developer productivity in the product development process?
You can improve developer productivity by following several ways:
Specify the project specifications
Clearly define the project’s specifications. Moreover, it enables you to start working on the project immediately. Properly defined requirements can also help to ensure that test results are functional and effective. Properly defined requirements can also help to ensure that test results are functional and effective.
Optimize your Integrated Development Environment (IDE)
Several IDEs have to autocomplete, syntax highlighting, and real-time code analysis tools. Set up your tools to increase developer productivity rather than decrease it.
Eliminate unneeded or extra tests
Developers in today’s agile teams are responsible for testing and frequently spend most of their time on maintenance-related tasks. Reviewing and enhancing this maintenance work is an important step toward improving developer productivity.
Minimize distractions and multitasking
Constant deadline alerts, open workspaces, and limited attention spans are all factors that may reduce the developer’s productivity. Likewise, when you work on multiple projects at once, it ends up taking a long time to complete all the to-do lists on time. Therefore, you should avoid attempts at multitasking.
What productivity tools are useful for developers?
In the IBM i space LANSA offers a set of powerful tools which can boost productivity. This includes Visual LANSA, aXes, Portalize, and more. Find out more about developer productivity tools for IBM i.
How do LANSA products improve the developer’s productivity?
LANSA offers a language-based low-code solution ‘Visual LANSA’. One could argue that it is the first low-code business solution and has a powerful user-friendly IDE. Furthermore, It combines the benefits and ideas of low-code principles with the flexibility and also control of traditional programming.
businesses can stay inside the IDE and use the Visual LANSA platform to develop a solution for all of your complex processes and special integration requirements. A developer only needs to know one language to get started quickly building corporate applications with less code.
Are you ready to boost your developer productivity using LANSA tools? Contact us. You can also try out Visual LANSA for free.
