Codermetrics: Analytics for Improving Software Teams

Codermetrics: Analytics for Improving Software Teams, 9781449305154 (1449305156), O'Reilly, 2011

Is there a rational way to measure coder skills and contributions and the way that software teams fit together? Could metrics help you improve coder self-awareness, teamwork, mentoring, and goal-setting? Could more detailed data help you make better hiring decisions, help make performance reviews fairer, and help your software teams become more successful?

Whether you are a coder, team leader, or manager, if you are interested in any of these topics or in how metrics can be applied in a variety of other ways for software development teams, then this book is designed with you in mind. The ideas in this book are a departure from how metrics have been applied to software development in the past. The concepts and techniques presented here are meant to help you think differently about building software teams and to help get you started on your own journey using metrics in new and better ways as part of the software development process.

As a manager of software teams, I myself am on that journey. I believe the techniques in this book have helped “turn around” troubled software teams and have helped good software teams become even better. Gathering metrics on a wider set of activities and outcomes isn’t the only path to success, of course, but it has worked for me, and I believe it can work for you, too.

Maybe you measure success by the number of people who use your software, or by how efficiently you deliver releases, or by how few errors you have. Will the use of metrics improve your teams and your success by 5%, 10%, 25%, or more? You will only know by testing these ideas yourself. But even if it’s just 5% (though I think it can be much more), how much is that worth? Even if using metrics simply helps the coders on a team become more self-aware and become better teammates, how much is that worth? At the very least, I believe the potential benefits justify the small amount of time and effort it takes to start gathering and using the kind of metrics described in this book. And if you don’t decide to gather metrics, I believe there are many concepts here that you can still learn from and apply to your own teams.

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