What are the key metrics to measure software development productivity?

Needless to say, it’s important to know the effectiveness of your software development group when you’re talking about business growth. Of course, the productivity of the team affects your success in a certain business. Do you know that you can measure productivity without wasting a lot of time and using complex formulas? It’s quite simple to use special software metrics to see if your development team works at its highest speed. Read our article to know the main metrics, and measure productivity easily!

9 metrics to measure productivity effectively

When you want to optimize the company’s speed, the first thing you have to do is to measure productivity. Use several important metrics below to get precious results and make decisions about increasing your team’s speed.

1. Cycle time. This parameter shows how much time your team is spending on a particular task or project. When you know your business’ goals, it’s possible to break down this parameter by type and see how long your development group is spending on every sort of task. You can count how long tasks are completed by another method: analyze every issue from open to a closed state and investigate every state in between.
2. Release cycle time. This parameter is similar to the previous one. You can calculate how much time your developers spend on a particular product release. You should start  measuring when developers begin to work on the product when it’s released (started to sell).
3. Velocity. With this metric, you can count the contributions of the team of developers. It shows how many completed features your company has delivered within a certain time. It’s easy to see if the speed of your team needs to be increased.
4. Throughput. This metric is similar to the velocity but includes more parameters. When you’re measuring a throughput of your team, it helps you to count all the bugs, tasks, and chores plus to features you were counting with velocity. With velocity, you can see what your developers produce can be sold, and throughput can give you more details about the overload of the entire team for a particular period.
5. Open pull requests. When something needs to be changed, your team of developers opens a pull request that requires the entire group to review their work thoroughly. Each request remains open until specialists review it and their manager closes the request marking it done. When you have a big number of open requests, it means that a lot of projects are getting to be completed but it also can mean that your team members are slow in reviewing requests. With this metric, you can find a reason and improve your team’s speed without stress and wasting a lot of time.
6. WIP (work in progress). This metric helps to count the tickets of your team of developers. It’s similar to throughput but these two measures have differences: when throughput shows what your company did during a certain period, work in progress shows what they’re working on right now.
7. Iteration flow. With this metric, you can see how every ticket status changes over a particular period. It’s helpful to investigate any repeats in processes and how they affect your team’s delivery time.
8. Difficulties with the implementation of the feature. With this parameter, you can see if your team finds their tasks challenging. Needless to say, when you hear that your specialists report a feature that was tough to improve, you can assume they’re not bored with their job. Of course, we suggest being very careful not to burn your team out.
9. A faster release. Turn your attention if your specialists report they can release faster. This means they can work faster and you should review their speed of work and set more realistic tasks.

The most experienced businessmen say that measuring productivity is very useful for your business. As you can see, with easy and fast methods you can measure the productivity of your developers without wasting a lot of time. Of course, for your business, it’s important to know that your company works with the highest productivity. Control this parameter easily with some metrics we have provided here.

If it’s still difficult for you to count your team’s productivity, you can find a reliable software service company that will help you to count all the important metrics and measure productivity easily. Improve your company and make your business successful without wasting a pile of time! If you need to develop your team or measure any development processes, qualified specialists will help you to do it without nerves.