Engineering productivity metrics are seductive because they seem objective. Lines of code, pull requests merged, tickets closed — all measurable, all gameable.
Lines of code measures typing speed, not value. PRs merged incentivises small, unambitious changes. Tickets closed incentivises ticket proliferation.
The metrics that are harder to game but more valuable: deployment frequency (teams that deploy more often are generally more productive and lower-risk), change failure rate (what percentage of deployments require a hotfix or rollback), and mean time to recovery (when something goes wrong, how quickly does the team recover).
These are the DORA metrics, and they measure outcomes that matter — not activities that can be performed without creating value.
The best measure of engineering productivity is the rate at which the team delivers outcomes the business cares about. This requires conversations with the business, not just dashboards of engineering activity.
— Dick Bassey | DevDick | 2024