Software Development

KPI’s to Measure Software Development Teams Productivity

Pratik Mistry
4 min readApr 28, 2021
Software development team

How do you determine something is good or bad at performance? You compare or measure it right. Likewise, KPI (Key Performance Indicator) is a value that specifies how well something is doing. Businesses may use this to monitor project achievements and failures at different times.

Businesses can track many figures and criteria — but is there a single metric that accurately signifies software development teams’ productivity? To answer the question in this post, I’ve listed some of the significant metrics or KPI’s to measure software developers’ productivity.

Creating Stable Code

Software programmers need to write code that are easy to update and modify. There are instances where changing a single line of code affects the whole application. Thus one needs to make sure the updation in code doesn’t affect the entire software.

Stability is more important to a professional developer than “code purity.” Simply be good and write stable APIs instead of following a Shangra-La vision of code perfection with each update. Long-term usability and reliability are priorities for experienced software developers. Be aware of how much effort the code’s users put forward to use it.

Testing Code Quality

Testing application code is vital for any business to achieve the desired output from the software development team. Software teams can show the maturity and readiness of their software by testing code on each stage.

Checking code quality regularly would enable teams to keep track of their productivity by highlighting bug fixes and any potential improvements that need to be made during the development period. This eventually results in optimized outputs during final releases.

Many cases of poor software code drag businesses down or turn a good product into a catastrophe. Space rockets have been mis-launched due to a poorly transcribed formula — a single line of code was missing that led the rocket to terminate 293 seconds after launch, ultimately costing around 20 million dollars.

Knowledge Sharing

The team can gather for information-sharing sessions to discuss what they’ve learned. A session may be focused on a particular subject or be more general. It’s a good idea to record the session and save it in the project documentation to be reused with new developers.

The more sharing that occurs, whether by code documentation, collaborative meetings, sharing of new things learned, or writing documents, the less concerned management would be as only a few prominent team members are gatekeepers to valuable information.

Developer’s Morale

Team members would be an influential contributors if they are proud of their work, feel respected and knowledgeable, are motivated to take action, and see a purpose in their work. They’ll also create more substantial, more creative software applications.

Checking in with employees is a simple way for businesses to gauge morale. Surveys for each sprint, for example, will probe how workers feel about interactions, teamwork, stress levels, and so on.

It’s a normal human tendency; if we feel virtuous for the work we do, that work’s effectiveness will automatically enhance. Morale isn’t a one-step metric, like the rest of these KPIs. It necessitates a more comprehensive, collective evaluation of patterns over time. Through — iterative evaluation, KPIs in software development improve and become more knowledgeable, just like agile.

Velocity

Velocity is a metric that measures how much value the app developers “delivered.” “Delivered value is usually defined as the number of features ready to go live or test that are completed within a given period.

Velocity may also assist you in determining whether or not your process adjustments are successful. If the team thinks they’ve discovered a more effective way to accomplish such tasks, calculating velocity will validate this. Software teams may also assess if modifying those processes — referred to as stable or enhanced velocity — improves performance.

Monitor Subtasks Timing

It might happen many times that software developers get occupied with other subtasks, which results in the delay of the primary task. Hence project managers should define a stipulated timing for a particular subtask.

Standard rules for alerting the team that their subtask has been completed should be established to inform other developers when to move on to the next subtask. The ScrumMaster can use a Burndown Chart during the day to keep track of the sprint’s progress. If things seem to be “off,” they can check the task board to see which subtasks are causing the actual delays.

Qualitative and Quantitative Metrics

To measure the accurate software teams performance metrics like lines of code, bug rates, project budget aren’t always reliable one, especially when developers are working on super complex projects. To ensure that Radixweb’s team works effectively and efficiently by leveraging the mix of qualitative and quantitative metrics at our company.

At the end of the day, businesses should aim to be fair to the software development team and their clients and understand that each project and each problem within a project is unique. Challenges will occur even when the team is working on something that should be straightforward.

As a renowned custom software company, Radixweb recognizes that everything we do is unique to ensure our team’s productivity remains high.

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Pratik Mistry

Technologist and Executive Vice-President at www.radixweb.com with a track record of growing revenues and enabling value-based partnerships to customers.