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Dev productivity metrics suck. Ops reviews are key for AI-accelerated eng orgs

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Re: Dev productivity metrics suck. Ops reviews are key for AI-accelerated eng orgs

#2
Dev productivity metrics frameworks are (and always have been, IMO) bad for measuring organizational effectiveness. Operational Excellence reviews are the future of measuring and improving organizational health, and I wrote a paper making the case for this + a framework that helps make the OE review effective.

Re: Dev productivity metrics suck. Ops reviews are key for AI-accelerated eng orgs

#5
I'm trying to disentangle this from the established / proven / trusted "dx core 4" (ask your local devops person if you don't recognise the name).

I found "initiatives" was added. What does this new initiatives measure bring. Why do we care about otherwise unqualified initiatives, how do i know that doesn't just mean using the other 4 proven measures as cover for pushing pet projects without merit?

I'm super cynical tonight it seems. This is just rubbing me up the wrong way i guess and i can't really put my finger on why.

Re: Dev productivity metrics suck. Ops reviews are key for AI-accelerated eng orgs

#6
post #2

Dev productivity metrics frameworks are (and always have been, IMO) bad for measuring organizational effectiveness. Operational Excellence reviews are the future of measuring and improving organizational health, and I wrote a paper making the case for this + a framework that helps make the OE review effective.

That sound interesting. Would you mind sharing it?

Re: Dev productivity metrics suck. Ops reviews are key for AI-accelerated eng orgs

#7

I'm trying to disentangle this from the established / proven / trusted "dx core 4" (ask your local devops person if you don't recognise the name). I found "initiatives" was added. What does this new initiatives measure bring. Why do we care about otherwise unqualified initiatives, how do i know that doesn't just mean using the other 4 proven measures as cover for pushing pet projects without merit? I'm super cynical…

I know I'm biased but Core 4 (and similar) rub me the wrong way – measuring individual developers as the atomic unit IMO is always meaningless. It's a proxy for organizational health but not directly correlated.

Especially now with AI, what do metrics like "prs/engineer" even mean when you have background agents open/reviewing/releasing PRs without human intervention? what is the right unit for measuring health of the org?

FWIW I write a lot more about "why not existing frameworks" in depth in the full paper.

Initiatives are defined specifically as non-productive, technical leverage-producing initiatives that affect the org's health as a whole and are often left behind. For example, we recently ran an initiative around feature flag cleanups and full rollouts that we tracked religiously during our weekly OpEx review – without which we probably would not have had the same success with that cleanup initiative.

I understand your cynicism with "yet another framework" but (and I know I'm biased) this framework is intimately tied to ops reviews as a mechanism for both measurement and organizational change.

Re: Dev productivity metrics suck. Ops reviews are key for AI-accelerated eng orgs

#9
post #6
post #2

Dev productivity metrics frameworks are (and always have been, IMO) bad for measuring organizational effectiveness. Operational Excellence reviews are the future of measuring and improving organizational health, and I wrote a paper making the case for this + a framework that helps make the OE review effective.

That sound interesting. Would you mind sharing it?

Should be available for download at the link in the post!

Re: Dev productivity metrics suck. Ops reviews are key for AI-accelerated eng orgs

#10
post #7

I'm trying to disentangle this from the established / proven / trusted "dx core 4" (ask your local devops person if you don't recognise the name). I found "initiatives" was added. What does this new initiatives measure bring. Why do we care about otherwise unqualified initiatives, how do i know that doesn't just mean using the other 4 proven measures as cover for pushing pet projects without merit? I'm super cynical…

I know I'm biased but Core 4 (and similar) rub me the wrong way – measuring individual developers as the atomic unit IMO is always meaningless. It's a proxy for organizational health but not directly correlated. Especially now with AI, what do metrics like "prs/engineer" even mean when you have background agents open/reviewing/releasing PRs without human intervention? what is the right unit for measuring health of th…

> Core 4 (and similar) rub me the wrong way – measuring individual developers as the atomic unit IMO is always meaningless

And From: https://getdx.com/research/measuring-developer-productivity-...

    > Diffs per engineer*
    >
    > * Not at individual level
Are you guys agreeing or disagreeing with each other?
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