Measuring Software Engineering

Overview
The article discusses the challenges of measuring engineering work and argues for a shift from individual-centric metrics to system-level indicators. It outlines practical approaches for tracking delivery speed, quality, and impact while avoiding incentives that can be gamed.

Key Takeaways

• Measure outcomes that matter to the product and the business, not just lines of code or tickets closed.
• Use leading indicators (cycle time, deployment frequency) together with lagging indicators (customer satisfaction, reliability).
• Align metrics with team goals to foster collaboration rather than competition.
• Avoid vanity metrics that can be gamed and focus on data that drives real improvement.

Who Would Benefit

• Engineering managers looking to build fair performance dashboards.
• Technical leaders who need to justify engineering investment to executives.
• CTOs and VP of Engineering responsible for organization-wide metrics.
• Product managers seeking better visibility into engineering delivery.

Frameworks and Methodologies

• DORA metrics (lead time, deployment frequency, MTTR, change failure rate).
• OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) for aligning engineering outcomes.
• Lean and Flow metrics for system-level throughput.