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Developers usually follow scrum frameworks, so productivity could easily be measured by overall activity, number of issues closed, merge requests completed, etc

Developers usually follow scrum frameworks, so productivity could easily be measured by overall activity, number of issues closed, merge requests completed, etc.

danjac 3y ago
That's about as silly a measure as number of lines of code produced.
- KronisLV 3y ago
  > That's about as silly a measure as number of lines of code produced. How else would you measure how much work someone does, other than by how much tracked work that's attributed to them there is? The people using these indicators probably don't care about someone who might have fewer closed issues but instead is helping out 5 people work more efficiently, but rather about people who are constantly shipping measurably less than others, stack ranking and all - in their minds, development should be viewed as some widget factory. Just look at what happened to agile and how SAFE ended up: https://www.atlassian.com/agile/agile-at-scale https://www.atlassian.com/agile/agile-at-scale That's also how you get attempts to turn some abstract complexity evaluation (story points) into hours that could be billed to a client ahead of time, even though it probably shouldn't and doesn't work like that.
  - mulmen 3y ago
    Measuring productivity is a fool’s errand. The reality is that performance is subjective and in a hierarchy only the whims of those above you matter.
  - robertlagrant 3y ago
    Ease of measurement is not enough. I can drive badly under the speed limit, so even though speed is easy to measure, it's not nearly good enough to evaluate my driving.
JAlexoid 3y ago
That's literally the last thing that managers look at, when it comes to making a layoff decision. Never have I ever been the person with highest "overall activity, number of issues closed, merge requests completed, etc.", yet I have not been laid off in a very long time. Last time I thought I was getting laid off, I misread the manager's comments as PIP.
ResearchCode 3y ago
The software engineers working on the best projects don't follow "scrum" frameworks. Where are the story velocity ticket points in Linux kernel development?

Developers usually follow scrum frameworks, so productivity could easily be measured by overall activity, number of issues closed, merge requests completed, etc.

danjac 3y ago

That's about as silly a measure as number of lines of code produced.

KronisLV 3y ago
> That's about as silly a measure as number of lines of code produced. How else would you measure how much work someone does, other than by how much tracked work that's attributed to them there is? The people using these indicators probably don't care about someone who might have fewer closed issues but instead is helping out 5 people work more efficiently, but rather about people who are constantly shipping measurably less than others, stack ranking and all - in their minds, development should be viewed as some widget factory. Just look at what happened to agile and how SAFE ended up: https://www.atlassian.com/agile/agile-at-scale https://www.atlassian.com/agile/agile-at-scale That's also how you get attempts to turn some abstract complexity evaluation (story points) into hours that could be billed to a client ahead of time, even though it probably shouldn't and doesn't work like that.
- mulmen 3y ago
  Measuring productivity is a fool’s errand. The reality is that performance is subjective and in a hierarchy only the whims of those above you matter.
- robertlagrant 3y ago
  Ease of measurement is not enough. I can drive badly under the speed limit, so even though speed is easy to measure, it's not nearly good enough to evaluate my driving.

JAlexoid 3y ago

That's literally the last thing that managers look at, when it comes to making a layoff decision. Never have I ever been the person with highest "overall activity, number of issues closed, merge requests completed, etc.", yet I have not been laid off in a very long time. Last time I thought I was getting laid off, I misread the manager's comments as PIP.

ResearchCode 3y ago

The software engineers working on the best projects don't follow "scrum" frameworks. Where are the story velocity ticket points in Linux kernel development?