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> There’s no way to measure productivity in software This is clearly not true Edit: It seems obvious to me that OP has a problem with his team, other than wit

> There’s no way to measure productivity in software This is clearly not true Edit: It seems obvious to me that OP has a problem with his team, other than with being able to measure pros/cons of his technologically choosen path

gonzofish 9y ago
I think that productivity is a tough thing to measure...yes there are metrics, but do any of them give an accurate picture of productivity? What do you think is an accurate measure of productivity?
- vmateixeira 9y ago
  Time would be an accurate measure, considering the same level of quality is met.
  - zip1234 9y ago
    Time spent working on the wrong thing is not productive. How do you measure quality in software? If you need to measure quality in order to measure productivity, than one cannot truly measure productivity.
    - dullgiulio 9y ago
      Or to describe this in practice: you can write prefectly modular, documented, tested and well written code that gets top marks at cyclomatic complexity checks. And yet, if you think carefully, your program can be solved by a quick shell one liner. Were you productive at all?
    - vmateixeira 9y ago
      You don't need to measure quality, unless you want to achieve perfection. If you set your quality according to goals, you can ensure that no matter different software you write, it will need to meet same goals (same level of quality).
kasey_junk 9y ago
Its a simplification of "there's no way to objectively measure productivity in software that doesn't introduce bad moral hazards". If you thank thats not true the industry would love to see what you've got as its one of the central problems in software development.
- jt2190 9y ago
  Should we as an industry stop trying measure productivity, or should we measure and try to manage the moral hazards? Is this a case of "perfect is the enemy of good enough?" (edit: It seems funny to me that many other industries are fine with less than perfect information, yet somehow the software industry can derive absolutely no value from it.)
  - kasey_junk 9y ago
    I don't think we've stopped trying to measure productivity, but when the author says "theres no way to measure productivity" he's short circuiting a whole meta conversation about trying to measure if a monorepo is better than a multirepo approach because the merits of the measurements then become what the argument is about and you end up with the same place but with a level of abstraction on top of what you are trying to determine. Lots and lots of other industries struggle with measuring productivity. The medical profession is rife with that problem. I think what might exaggerate the problem in software is we over value the objective decision making. Its our nature to want to quantify and we don't like making subjective decisions even when that is what we are being called to do.
AndrewDucker 9y ago
You've made an assertion, but not provided any evidence for it. That doesn't seem, to me, to add much to the discussion. Would you like to back your statement up?
- renesd 9y ago
  They don't need to back it up. It is up to the person making the original claim to back it up. There's half a century of research and practice into this topic. Anyone in the industry _should_ know about this. Anyone who doesn't can find it on a search engine within 30 seconds.
  - Retric 9y ago
    No, it's a well known problem. The old lines of code joke still applies. You can introduce metrics, but those will just be gamed because software is a multidimensional optimization problem with complex trade offs. So, you can't translate that to a single measurement and call it productivity.
    - renesd 9y ago
      Yes, it's a well known problem.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
  - AndrewDucker 9y ago
    There's half a century of research - and yet, no clear way of measuring productivity, that I am aware of. If you're aware of one then a link to an article about it, or even a wikipedia page, would be awesome.
- vmateixeira 9y ago
  In software, productivity can pretty much be measured through time spent on a task, while mantaining same quality.
dfabulich 9y ago
(Author here.) When I wrote that, I was echoing what I believed to be a widespread view. For example: https://martinfowler.com/bliki/CannotMeasureProductivity.html https://martinfowler.com/bliki/CannotMeasureProductivity.htm... "Productivity, of course, is something you determine by looking at the input of an activity and its output. So to measure software productivity you have to measure the output of software development - the reason we can't measure productivity is because we can't measure output." In an earlier post, I argue that in light of the fact that we can't measure productivity, we should measure job satisfaction instead. https://redfin.engineering/measure-job-satisfaction-instead-of-software-engineering-productivity-418779ce3451 https://redfin.engineering/measure-job-satisfaction-instead-...

gonzofish 9y ago

I think that productivity is a tough thing to measure...yes there are metrics, but do any of them give an accurate picture of productivity? What do you think is an accurate measure of productivity?

vmateixeira 9y ago
Time would be an accurate measure, considering the same level of quality is met.
- zip1234 9y ago
  Time spent working on the wrong thing is not productive. How do you measure quality in software? If you need to measure quality in order to measure productivity, than one cannot truly measure productivity.
  - dullgiulio 9y ago
    Or to describe this in practice: you can write prefectly modular, documented, tested and well written code that gets top marks at cyclomatic complexity checks. And yet, if you think carefully, your program can be solved by a quick shell one liner. Were you productive at all?
  - vmateixeira 9y ago
    You don't need to measure quality, unless you want to achieve perfection. If you set your quality according to goals, you can ensure that no matter different software you write, it will need to meet same goals (same level of quality).

kasey_junk 9y ago

Its a simplification of "there's no way to objectively measure productivity in software that doesn't introduce bad moral hazards". If you thank thats not true the industry would love to see what you've got as its one of the central problems in software development.

jt2190 9y ago
Should we as an industry stop trying measure productivity, or should we measure and try to manage the moral hazards? Is this a case of "perfect is the enemy of good enough?" (edit: It seems funny to me that many other industries are fine with less than perfect information, yet somehow the software industry can derive absolutely no value from it.)
- kasey_junk 9y ago
  I don't think we've stopped trying to measure productivity, but when the author says "theres no way to measure productivity" he's short circuiting a whole meta conversation about trying to measure if a monorepo is better than a multirepo approach because the merits of the measurements then become what the argument is about and you end up with the same place but with a level of abstraction on top of what you are trying to determine. Lots and lots of other industries struggle with measuring productivity. The medical profession is rife with that problem. I think what might exaggerate the problem in software is we over value the objective decision making. Its our nature to want to quantify and we don't like making subjective decisions even when that is what we are being called to do.

AndrewDucker 9y ago

You've made an assertion, but not provided any evidence for it. That doesn't seem, to me, to add much to the discussion. Would you like to back your statement up?

renesd 9y ago
They don't need to back it up. It is up to the person making the original claim to back it up. There's half a century of research and practice into this topic. Anyone in the industry _should_ know about this. Anyone who doesn't can find it on a search engine within 30 seconds.
- Retric 9y ago
  No, it's a well known problem. The old lines of code joke still applies. You can introduce metrics, but those will just be gamed because software is a multidimensional optimization problem with complex trade offs. So, you can't translate that to a single measurement and call it productivity.
  - renesd 9y ago
    Yes, it's a well known problem.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- AndrewDucker 9y ago
  There's half a century of research - and yet, no clear way of measuring productivity, that I am aware of. If you're aware of one then a link to an article about it, or even a wikipedia page, would be awesome.
vmateixeira 9y ago
In software, productivity can pretty much be measured through time spent on a task, while mantaining same quality.

dfabulich 9y ago

(Author here.) When I wrote that, I was echoing what I believed to be a widespread view. For example: https://martinfowler.com/bliki/CannotMeasureProductivity.html https://martinfowler.com/bliki/CannotMeasureProductivity.htm... "Productivity, of course, is something you determine by looking at the input of an activity and its output. So to measure software productivity you have to measure the output of software development - the reason we can't measure productivity is because we can't measure output." In an earlier post, I argue that in light of the fact that we can't measure productivity, we should measure job satisfaction instead. https://redfin.engineering/measure-job-satisfaction-instead-of-software-engineering-productivity-418779ce3451 https://redfin.engineering/measure-job-satisfaction-instead-...