Productivity Measurement

TL;DR

Do you know how much metadata is generated during software development?



Our research has shown that this productivity index can be used to compare projects, teams, and even the same team across time. Want a deeper dive into our methodology? Keep scrolling! 👇

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We are on a mission to empower software developers and remove the barriers of global engineering collaboration.

Key Questions

Measuring productivity in software development is essential, providing invaluable insights for both developers and management. It serves as a key indicator to help answer important questions such as:

Challanges

However, one of the biggest challenges in measuring productivity is the need to compile diverse metrics from different phases of the software development lifecycle. The MECOIS Productivity Index does just that.


Current approaches segment and aggregate all available metrics into hand-crafted categories. However, this approach has several issues:


Our Approach

To address these and more, we apply a method commonly used in the social sciences to evaluate complex, multidimensional constructs: the creation of a composite index. This approach effectively counteracts the three challenges above, making the MECOIS Productivity Index an ideal solution for measuring productivity in software development.


Instead of relying on individual metrics in isolation, we group correlating metrics into key dimensions using data-driven statistical methods. Each dimension–or principal component– represents the most influential aspects of development. Doing so drastically reduces the number of dimensions required.

During our research, we applied this productivity index to a variety of software projects, tracking their progress over a three-month period. Using the MECOIS Productivity Index, we established a relative ranking which highlighted the highest and lowest performing teams at any given moment.


This live ranking allowed us to uncover key insights into team dynamics, development patterns, and potential factors influencing productivity; both the good and the bad.

The Results

The MECOIS Productivity Index identified a team, Team 16, who demonstrated consistently high performance throughout their development. Their workflows aligned well with intended processes, resulting in efficient development time for all team members. By identifying this high-performing team, we were able to conduct a deeper analysis of their processes allowing us to discover best practices.


Team 13, on the other hand, started off with a high ranking but trended downward. A closer look revealed the cause to be miscommunication between the product owner and customers regarding feature requirements, which prevented the development team from working at full capacity. Catching issues like this early is critical to customer retention.


In contrast, Team 8 faced the opposite challenge. Their project began with difficulties, but thanks to effective intervention by the scrum master and product owner, misunderstandings were resolved, leading to a much smoother and more efficient development process in the latter half.


The MECOIS Productivity Index enables intelligently identifying potential issues in their early stages so problem solving is proactive instead of reactive.

We are currently in private beta. Please subscribe to connect with us and be among the first to learn about general availability.

We are on a mission to empower software developers and remove the barriers of global engineering collaboration.