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There's No Such Thing as Software Productivity (2012)

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Re: There's No Such Thing as Software Productivity (2012)

#91

Post by rob74 »

theamk wrote: post #62
WgaqPdNr7PGLGVW wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I just don't seem to struggle, as others claim to, in measuring productivity. Because you are measuring at a very broad and basic level. Steve is more productive than Susan. Great. How much more productive? Can you turn it into a number? Can you still do it consistently when Steve and Susan are in different teams in different parts of the organisation trying to achieve different goals? I've done DB upgrades that to…

I don't think anyone can get numbers, but partial ordering is much easier. If Steve and Susan are in different part of organization, the answer is "cannot compare". If they are doing different job, the answer is the same. But every once in a while there is a scenarios when you can compare people easily. There has a weekly rotation to be an support person for other team. During his week, John always answers questions…

I would argue that here you are talking less about productivity and more about basic competence?

Re: There's No Such Thing as Software Productivity (2012)

#92

Post by rob74 »

johnfn wrote: post #9

I'm not sure I follow. So you failed to measure software productivity in lines of code, therefore it follows that "There's No Such Thing as Software Productivity"? Don't you think that giving up after n=1 attempts at measuring software productivity might be a tad too fast to draw a generalized claim of impossibility? I might argue the real lesson learned is "Lines of Code are Not a Measure of Productivity in an Isola…

This is not an isolated toy example, it's reductio ad absurdum (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_absurdum) - and until today I haven't seen a way to measure software productivity (might also apply to other knowledge work) that is resistant to that...

Re: There's No Such Thing as Software Productivity (2012)

#93

Post by fcantournet »

irjustin wrote: post #30

I realized why this post rubs me the wrong way. It complains, but doesn't offer a solution. It simply criticizes and says "all engineers cannot and thusly should not be measured". The ironic thing is, the blog post is implicitly measuring by not explicitly measuring. The measurement is the bug ticket itself and whatever value attached to it. But to this end, I generally agree. There are qualitative and quantitative m…

Why do you need to evaluate people constantly and pit them against each other ? Why not give a raise to everyone and see what happens ?

It's how we sent rockets to the moon, it seemed to work ok.

Re: There's No Such Thing as Software Productivity (2012)

#94

Post by robertlagrant »

jchw wrote: post #86
johnfn wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would you choose a cofounder? I would call whatever metric you use to determine "would that person be a good cofounder" productivity. (OK, sure, let's narrow it down and say that you were tasked with choosing a purely technical cofounder; perhaps in this hypothetical you're helping your non-technical friend find one?) Do you still believe you couldn't do better than chance?

Well, a lot of the factors explicitly have nothing to do with general productivity at all, such as alignment. The goal with regards to selecting for productivity would be "someone who seems productive enough" but getting hung up on exactly how productive feels like a mistake, as aside from being unquantifiable, that isn't going to be the only or probably even main factor that decides the fate of the endeavor. Product…

I suppose the question is: can you supply a word you would use when deciding on who to hire for a technical role? Does anyone off the street contribute the same amount of that word, or would you be selective?

Re: There's No Such Thing as Software Productivity (2012)

#95

Post by robertlagrant »

nradov wrote: post #50
johnfn wrote: post #9

I'm not sure I follow. So you failed to measure software productivity in lines of code, therefore it follows that "There's No Such Thing as Software Productivity"? Don't you think that giving up after n=1 attempts at measuring software productivity might be a tad too fast to draw a generalized claim of impossibility? I might argue the real lesson learned is "Lines of Code are Not a Measure of Productivity in an Isola…

Function point analysis works well enough for measuring software productivity in most domains, provided that quality is held constant. Like other software productivity metrics it's only meaningful at the level of a complete product team and worse than useless for evaluating individual team members. https://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/32.44364 So you can measure productivity with a reasonable level of accuracy…

> Function point analysis works well enough for measuring software productivity in most domains, provided that quality is held constant

Well enough for what? And how do you measure quality?

Re: There's No Such Thing as Software Productivity (2012)

#96

Post by robertlagrant »

impure wrote: post #58

Let's say that you have two runners running the same marathon. The first one, Frank, sprints at full speed and eventually tires out and slows down. The second runner, Peter, takes a nap first and then finishes the marathon at the exact same time. Which of these two runners was faster in the race? The answer is: It doesn't matter. And therefore there is no such thing as running speed. There is such a thing as producti…

The answer is neither is faster, because they finished at the same time.

Re: There's No Such Thing as Software Productivity (2012)

#97

Post by InsideOutSanta »

WgaqPdNr7PGLGVW wrote: post #44
johnfn wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To take your envy(I sense it on the quoted remark) to another place, think about how you go about measuring productivity of a CEO, PO, PM, Scrum Master, Agilist/Agile-Specialist etc? I have no envy; I'm a software engineer as well. I just don't seem to struggle, as others claim to, in measuring productivity. I find it fairly straightforward to see that some people are more productive than others, at least in my wor…

> I just don't seem to struggle, as others claim to, in measuring productivity. Because you are measuring at a very broad and basic level. Steve is more productive than Susan. Great. How much more productive? Can you turn it into a number? Can you still do it consistently when Steve and Susan are in different teams in different parts of the organisation trying to achieve different goals? I've done DB upgrades that to…

"What changed was not my productivity but the nature of the problem"

I think that's the source of the problem: it's impossible to measure the "work" required to solve most software problems. If you tell me to carry a stone up a hill, I can put that in a formula and know exactly how much work I'll have to do. But if you give me a ticket to do a DB upgrade, I can, at best, make an educated guess.

So by the time I close the ticket, how much work have I done, and how do I know whether the time I've spent it proportional to the work I've done?

Re: There's No Such Thing as Software Productivity (2012)

#99

Post by InsideOutSanta »

theamk wrote: post #64
ipaddr wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ability to look productive is a different skill. The ability to create any impression is a skill some have. Creating fires and putting them out like a hero is another skill. What are your eyes measuring? Are you being fooled?

If you are IC, it's pretty easy to see if your teammates are "looking productive" vs "are really productive", as you know all the code and how it works. For other teams yeah, it's harder, or maybe even impossible if the teams are isolated.

> If you are IC, it's pretty easy to see if your teammates > are "looking productive" vs "are really productive"

I'm not sure how true this really is. We all like to think that we're good at estimating other people's ability, particularly if we work closely with them, but how can you validate that impression?

Something that happened to me at one point in my career was that I joined a team that was half new hires with little experience, and half long-term employees with a lot of experience. Because the long-term employees were typically extremely busy, I ended up answering a lot of questions from the entry-level devs. So I spent time documenting the system, doing trainings, doing 1-on-1 code reviews, and so on.

During the performance review, feedback from the entry-level devs was that I was highly productive, and feedback from the long-term employees was that I was a slacker.

Re: There's No Such Thing as Software Productivity (2012)

#100

Post by gizmo »

travisgriggs wrote: post #87
johnfn wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Great. How much more productive? Can you turn it into a number? This is moving goalposts. OP's argument was "There's No Such Thing as Software Productivity", not "You Can't Convert Software Productivity into a Floating Point Number With 3 Decimals of Accuracy."

There’s no real dependable/reproducible single linear measure of software productivity”. Would that be a fairer assertion?

By that measure there also isn't a real dependable/reproducible scalar that measures athleticism. Nonetheless some people are clearly more athletic than others. Also within a single sport we can easily see that some players are better than others. Here too you could object that people who play offense should not be compared to players in defense. Or that it's not individual players that matters but the team as a whole. And yet, we can still figure out easily who the star players are.
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