What is the most valuable outcome? This is the most important question to answer before starting an engineering metrics program. In this talk I discuss which dev team metrics matter most, the outcome they produce, and pitfalls to avoid when starting a metrics initiative.

The truth is, no one really likes being measured, especially devs. But business leaders like looking at numbers, so they grab what’s easily available - # of code changes, agile velocity, individual dev metrics. These types of metrics are unbalanced, exclude context, and hurt engineering culture as a whole.

What you measure is what your team will produce. If you start measuring the number of code changes as a key performance metric, you are going to see coding time, PR size, and Cycle Time all increase.

Don’t fall into this trap.

In this session I discuss which team level metrics are most significant, the outcomes they produce, and strategies that will help you avoid the mistakes I’ve already made.