Linked by snydeq on Thu 17th Nov 2011 22:47 UTC
Fatal Exception's Neil McAllister discusses why code analysis and similar metrics provide little insight into what really makes an effective software development team, in the wake of a new scorecard system employed at IBM. "Code metrics are fine if all you care about is raw code production. But what happens to all that code once it's written? Do you just ship it and move on? Hardly - in fact, many developers spend far more of their time maintaining code than adding to it. Do your metrics take into account time spent refactoring or documenting existing code? Is it even possible to devise metrics for these activities?" McAllister writes, "Are developers who take time to train and mentor other teams about the latest code changes considered less productive than ones who stay heads-down at their desks and never reach out to their peers? How about teams that take time at the beginning of a project to coordinate with other teams for code reuse, versus those who charge ahead blindly? Can any automated tool measure these kinds of best practices?"
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"it might be best simply to forget about the idea of measuring developer productivity and rely instead on tried and true methods. That's right: A highly effective, productive developer workforce is often the result of high-quality, effective management. Unfortunately, nobody has developed a metric for that yet. Coincidence?"
he has some valid ideas, but he is also ranting. he is attacking logic-based decisions with emotional fire. fury even!
make your points, but we must still keep TRYING to get better. we can't shut it all down and work on intuition. we (organizations of people) must TRY to find processes to better ourselves. even if we keep failing!