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Cannot Measure Productivity

martinfowler.com

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Re: Cannot Measure Productivity

#21

Post by lifeisstillgood »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #3

It has been more than 10 years, it has been at least 50 since there were moans about productivity in the early 60's. Feynman had some interesting thoughts on minimal computation that sort of paralleled Shannon's information complexity. As you know Shannon was interested in absolute limits to the amount of information in a channel and Feynman was more about the amount of computation per joule of energy. But the essenc…

I love Feynman's idea of minimal computational energy - it suggests that we could actually measure elegance.

And to be fair we do - the great works of art, craft a d even science are almost always elegant. And it is something we atrive for. Some buggers have it and the rest of us wade around with feet of clay - but it is conceivably measurable.

Going to be easier to go with the editor's taste I think though.

Re: Cannot Measure Productivity

#22

Post by skrebbel »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #5

I am going to get my drum out and bang on it again. Software is a form of literacy - and we measure literacy completely differently. In fact we measure it like we measure science - you are not a scientist unless other scientists agree you are, and you are not a coder unless other coders say you are. What Fowler wants to measure is not the top echelons of productivity but the lower bounds - presumably to winnow out th…

I agree with what you're saying, but I feel that it's exactly what Fowler is saying too. The article is called "cannot measure productivity", after all.

What parts of what he writes do you disagree with?

Re: Cannot Measure Productivity

#23

Post by kailuowang »

The purpose of measuring productivity is to manage it. There are two categories of factors that decide the overall productivity: the factors within the developers (capability, motivation, etc) and the factors outside the developers (tools, process, support, etc).

True, it's hard to objectively measure the overall productivity using a universal standard, but it is relatively easier to measure the productivity fluctuation caused by the external factors. Velocity measurement in Agile practice is mostly for that end.

For the internal factors, the best way, and arguably the only effective way, to manage it is probably to hire good motivated developers. I think most top level software companies have learned that.

Re: Cannot Measure Productivity

#24

Post by lifeisstillgood »

skrebbel wrote: post #22
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #5

I am going to get my drum out and bang on it again. Software is a form of literacy - and we measure literacy completely differently. In fact we measure it like we measure science - you are not a scientist unless other scientists agree you are, and you are not a coder unless other coders say you are. What Fowler wants to measure is not the top echelons of productivity but the lower bounds - presumably to winnow out th…

I agree with what you're saying, but I feel that it's exactly what Fowler is saying too. The article is called " cannot measure productivity", after all. What parts of what he writes do you disagree with?

Fairy Nuff

I suppose he ends with throwing his hands in the air and saying we cannot do it. Well actually we can achieve a measure of literacy, just not perhaps fluency.

We know if a child can read and read well. It's possible to take their written work and assess or mark it. We can (and do in code reviews) do the same for code written by adults.

The problem he is stating is IMO in two parts - measuring basic competence (is a person of net benefit, can they write competent code, are they literate?) which is possible, and how good are they compared to their peers, which is much more subjective and based on taste as much as anything.

So I agree we should not try to measure productivity, I disagree that that's the end of the conversation, mostly because I disagree that productivity is one thing - I see it as more Hygiene/Motivator

Re: Cannot Measure Productivity

#25

Post by foobarbazqux »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #5

I am going to get my drum out and bang on it again. Software is a form of literacy - and we measure literacy completely differently. In fact we measure it like we measure science - you are not a scientist unless other scientists agree you are, and you are not a coder unless other coders say you are. What Fowler wants to measure is not the top echelons of productivity but the lower bounds - presumably to winnow out th…

> you are not a scientist unless other scientists agree you are

Science requires one thing: making and testing falsifiable hypotheses. A priest is able to determine whether or not you are doing that. If anything, it's philosophers who decide what science is, e.g. Karl Popper.

Re: Cannot Measure Productivity

#26

Post by nathan_long »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #21
ChuckMcM wrote: post #3

It has been more than 10 years, it has been at least 50 since there were moans about productivity in the early 60's. Feynman had some interesting thoughts on minimal computation that sort of paralleled Shannon's information complexity. As you know Shannon was interested in absolute limits to the amount of information in a channel and Feynman was more about the amount of computation per joule of energy. But the essenc…

I love Feynman's idea of minimal computational energy - it suggests that we could actually measure elegance . And to be fair we do - the great works of art, craft a d even science are almost always elegant. And it is something we atrive for. Some buggers have it and the rest of us wade around with feet of clay - but it is conceivably measurable. Going to be easier to go with the editor's taste I think though.

>> I love Feynman's idea of minimal computational energy - it suggests that we could actually measure elegance.

It's a lovely idea, but in practice would be hard. "I just updated my interpreter and my code got 20% more efficient!" "How does it compare to that other code?" "I don't know, it's incompatible with the new interpreter."

Re: Cannot Measure Productivity

#27

Post by lifeisstillgood »

kailuowang wrote: post #23

The purpose of measuring productivity is to manage it. There are two categories of factors that decide the overall productivity: the factors within the developers (capability, motivation, etc) and the factors outside the developers (tools, process, support, etc). True, it's hard to objectively measure the overall productivity using a universal standard, but it is relatively easier to measure the productivity fluctuat…

This is true - to an extent. Scrum screams out to measure relative story points, and never provide the data for "management" purposes. But even the same team estimating in succession will face external pressures - and if those pressures will be alleviated by gaming story points, they will. This catch-22 had me - I truly think the only way is to report only an estimated finish date. Any public posting of velocity eventually filters into a management by velocity - because that's the only metric management has. And we are back on the same old loop - we can have a measure of productivity as long as we do not use it in any manner as a measure of productivity.

Add to this I don't think scrum has become setup to take this to its logical conclusions - agile/scrum has been sold as a fairly fixed methodology, not as a means to get some relative metric out of teams and use that in a series of experiments to achieve productivity improvements. And even if it were, the major wins we know and can prove work (quiet conditions, minimal interruptions, trust, respect, time for reflection and education, are a long way from being accepted by today's enterprises.

In short there is no silver bullet, and while agile looked a magic bullet it just turned out to be plain old lead.

Re: Cannot Measure Productivity

#29

Post by swombat »

foobarbazqux wrote: post #25
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #5

I am going to get my drum out and bang on it again. Software is a form of literacy - and we measure literacy completely differently. In fact we measure it like we measure science - you are not a scientist unless other scientists agree you are, and you are not a coder unless other coders say you are. What Fowler wants to measure is not the top echelons of productivity but the lower bounds - presumably to winnow out th…

> you are not a scientist unless other scientists agree you are Science requires one thing: making and testing falsifiable hypotheses. A priest is able to determine whether or not you are doing that. If anything, it's philosophers who decide what science is, e.g. Karl Popper.

Doing science does not make you a scientist.

Re: Cannot Measure Productivity

#30

Post by [deleted] »

swombat wrote: post #29
foobarbazqux wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you are not a scientist unless other scientists agree you are Science requires one thing: making and testing falsifiable hypotheses. A priest is able to determine whether or not you are doing that. If anything, it's philosophers who decide what science is, e.g. Karl Popper.

Doing science does not make you a scientist.

[deleted]
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