Maybe my career in metrology has me jaded but I think you have to: 1) Define a metric meaningful for whatever you're interested in, e.g. developer productivty

Maybe my career in metrology has me jaded but I think you have to: 1) Define a metric meaningful for whatever you're interested in, e.g. developer productivty 2) Find a way of accurately measuring that metric (surely not LOC) 3) Do some R&Rs (repeatability and reproducability) and other gage studies 4) Use this metric to your advantage In that narrow sense I'm sure some 10x, 20x, ... developers exist but you can't plug and play them.