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Developer Productivity for Humans: Software Quality

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Re: Developer Productivity for Humans: Software Quality

#21

Post by krapp »

galaxyLogic wrote: post #20
0xbadcafebee wrote: post #5

If you're going to worry about software quality, you need to stop talking about developer productivity, and start talking about business productivity. You can't objectively measure the productivity of a worker in isolation. You have to measure whether the productivity of a worker increases the overall value of the business, or whatever goals the business has. It goes like this: 1. "We need to improve how fast develop…

I find the concept of "productivity" fascinating. It must be measured in money because (positive) productivity means someone is paying for what you are doing. And in that sense you cannot measure the productivity of a single person alone, you must measure what people are willing to pay for their output. If you produce exactly the same as you did last month but nobody is buying it this month (or ever again) it means y…

>If you produce exactly the same as you did last month but nobody is buying it this month (or ever again) it means your productivity is zero. Is that true? Or does it mean your productivity is negative?

No, your productivity has no connection to sales unless your job is in sales. And productivity for individual employees is measured all the time, across all industries.

Your time and output is being paid for by your employer, not the customer (except where they are the same person,) therefore productivity is loosely a measure of the value you create for your employer over time.

Re: Developer Productivity for Humans: Software Quality

#22

Post by Davidbrcz »

kdfjgbdfkjgb wrote: post #18
sokoloff wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> not all businesses have investors. If I form a business and take no outside money, I am the investor, particularly in the context of GP’s point that “[businesses exist]…to make investors money.”

what about nonprofits?

Nonprofits still need to break even or raise funds (membership fees, donations).

Re: Developer Productivity for Humans: Software Quality

#23

Post by [deleted] »

techdmn wrote: post #2

In my experience few things sap developer motivation quite the same way as being forced to support, but not allowed to fix(!), a low quality product. The business rationalization makes a certain sort of sense. If we burn, say, 4 hours a week manually cleaning up after bug X, but it would take 80 hours to fix it, maybe the return on investment doesn't compete well against other initiatives this quarter. But in my expe…

[deleted]

Re: Developer Productivity for Humans: Software Quality

#24

Post by [deleted] »

linuxlizard wrote: post #4
techdmn wrote: post #2

In my experience few things sap developer motivation quite the same way as being forced to support, but not allowed to fix(!), a low quality product. The business rationalization makes a certain sort of sense. If we burn, say, 4 hours a week manually cleaning up after bug X, but it would take 80 hours to fix it, maybe the return on investment doesn't compete well against other initiatives this quarter. But in my expe…

I know it's ridiculous, but I will use my own time to work on some problems that officially we're not allowed to fix. I make that issue my hobby project and use my time to learn some new tool/technology (that looks good on a resume). For example, right now I'm learning Rust to fix [a hairy build problem]. Taking on the problem gives me back some that developer motivation. Using it as a learning opportunity makes me f…

[deleted]

Re: Developer Productivity for Humans: Software Quality

#25

Post by marcosdumay »

0xbadcafebee wrote: post #5

If you're going to worry about software quality, you need to stop talking about developer productivity, and start talking about business productivity. You can't objectively measure the productivity of a worker in isolation. You have to measure whether the productivity of a worker increases the overall value of the business, or whatever goals the business has. It goes like this: 1. "We need to improve how fast develop…

Actual management is hard! Companies are completely chaotic systems, and every important feature comes as much from the details as they do from the big picture.

Most people are completely unable to work with that, what includes a large majority of the managers on every level. Worse yet, it's never clear if a good or bad result happened because of somebody's work or despite it, so the feedback is completely unreliable and it's incredibly hard for people to improve.

And yet, I've never seen anybody teaching "management" to even acknowledging any of the complexity. (Including famous authors and professors.)

Re: Developer Productivity for Humans: Software Quality

#26

Post by prmph »

danielovichdk wrote: post #14

"...or that reliability may not even fully depend on code quality at all (“I’ve seen lots of reliable code that’s poor quality.”) They indicated that while these are related, they are not the same concept as “code quality.”" Something being more reliable than something else is an absolute quality measure.

Code quality is mostly related to maintainability.

A piece of code may be reliable currently, but hard to modify.

Re: Developer Productivity for Humans: Software Quality

#28

Post by bluGill »

krapp wrote: post #21
galaxyLogic wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find the concept of "productivity" fascinating. It must be measured in money because (positive) productivity means someone is paying for what you are doing. And in that sense you cannot measure the productivity of a single person alone, you must measure what people are willing to pay for their output. If you produce exactly the same as you did last month but nobody is buying it this month (or ever again) it means y…

>If you produce exactly the same as you did last month but nobody is buying it this month (or ever again) it means your productivity is zero. Is that true? Or does it mean your productivity is negative? No, your productivity has no connection to sales unless your job is in sales. And productivity for individual employees is measured all the time, across all industries. Your time and output is being paid for by your e…

Proxies of productivity are measured. what really matters is total net profit over tha life of the work. For sales this is easy to measure, and for production factoriy workers it isn't too hard. But for most jobs it is hard. Even simple acts like greasing machines is hard to measure how it affcts profits (an actountant can do it, but at the cost of an actountant is it worth measuring) for engingineering the measure cannot be made until the last of that product is sold, but we need it up front to decide if we should invest in the engineering.

Re: Developer Productivity for Humans: Software Quality

#29

Post by 6gvONxR4sf7o »

sokoloff wrote: post #9
klabb3 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The inconvenient truth is that the business exists not to provide engineers with work they’re happy with or proud of but to make investors money. First that’s not always technically true because not all businesses have investors. But assuming that the primary purpose is to make money, even that’s not precise since there’s a massive difference on optimizing for ROI tomorrow vs next quarter vs when you retire and han…

> not all businesses have investors. If I form a business and take no outside money, I am the investor, particularly in the context of GP’s point that “[businesses exist]…to make investors money.”

So in that case, you're investing your time in return for money/happiness? Sounds like the same proposition as employees.

Re: Developer Productivity for Humans: Software Quality

#30

Post by endofreach »

krapp wrote: post #21
galaxyLogic wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find the concept of "productivity" fascinating. It must be measured in money because (positive) productivity means someone is paying for what you are doing. And in that sense you cannot measure the productivity of a single person alone, you must measure what people are willing to pay for their output. If you produce exactly the same as you did last month but nobody is buying it this month (or ever again) it means y…

>If you produce exactly the same as you did last month but nobody is buying it this month (or ever again) it means your productivity is zero. Is that true? Or does it mean your productivity is negative? No, your productivity has no connection to sales unless your job is in sales. And productivity for individual employees is measured all the time, across all industries. Your time and output is being paid for by your e…

Why so complicated? Productivity per se has nothing to do with sales or employment at all. I can be very productive writing poems for myself.

High Productivity = Spent effort results in progress towards the desired outcome (the product).

The question is: What is the product? I believe the issue is, that many (software) company are confused about that. Their product is the invoice. Everything else – especially the software sold, is just a means to an end.

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