There is unhealthy An obsession with companies looking for a way to measure developer productivity.
Over the past 20 years, I have led multi-disciplinary technology teams across some of Australia’s largest organisations. Most recently, I led the development of the internal development platform, supporting the experience of over 7,000 engineers as an Executive Director at the Commonwealth Bank of Australia. Today, I lead the DevOps Evangelism team at Atlassian, where I regularly meet with Fortune 500 companies, and travel the world to share insights and guidance on improving software teams, high-performance leadership, and engagement.
In my conversations with senior leaders, I have come to understand the desire to measure productivity. Senior leaders are under pressure to deliver results while leveraging their investments in teams and technology. There are no nefarious intentions behind measuring developer productivity; Leaders really want their teams to be as productive as possible. The problem is that developer productivity is incredibly difficult to measure, leading organizations to allocate disproportionate effort and resources while trying to find the magic metric. This investment in measurement takes valuable time away from initiatives that could help developers increase their productivity.
Imagine the possibilities if the same amount of time and energy were invested in improving developer productivity rather than trying to measure it.
Fact: Happy developers are productive developers
Intentionally improving the developer experience is the most effective way to improve developer productivity within an organization.
Happy employees are productive employees may seem like an obvious statement, but this gets lost in the discussion of developer productivity.
Think back to any high-performance developer you’ve worked with; They probably went beyond what was officially expected of them. This developer was likely very engaged, had everything he needed to do his best work, and generally enjoyed his work.
The behaviors associated with employees who “exceed expectations” are known as organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) and are driven by job satisfaction. Thousands of academic research papers support the idea that satisfied employees are productive employees, and software developers are no exception.
So, if satisfied developers are productive developers, then developer productivity is a byproduct of developer joy.