Everything Wrong With Developer Productivity Metrics with Adam Berry

"Metrics will not measure developer productivity and will not solve your engineering organization’s problems", say Adam Berry, Staff Engineer at Netflix. Adam sits with Ankit Jain, host of The Hangar DX podcast, to discuss one of the most debated topics in engineering: developer productivity metrics. Adam shares why metrics like the DORA4 were never meant to measure individual productivity, how trust (or lack of it) inside organizations changes the way metrics are used, and why managers often get lost in numbers instead of focusing on narrative and impact. He explains that metrics are a feedback mechanism, the “metrics industrial complex,” and pitfalls of over-measuring, and how to design metrics from scratch. 00:00 Introduction to Developer Productivity Metrics 01:23 The Origins of Productivity Metrics 07:22 The Obsession with Metrics 10:44 Challenges in Measuring Developer Productivity 12:33 The Metrics Industrial Complex 15:38 The Role of Metrics in Understanding Delivery Performance 19:31 Designing Effective Metrics for Organizations 21:57 Understanding Quality Issues in Engineering 34:32 Measuring Code Quality and Technical Debt 39:02 Prioritizing Engineering Challenges 41:42 Future of Engineering Productivity About Adam Berry Adam has worked on developer tools and infrastructure throughout his career, from Eclipse plugins to service and infrastructure work; he now focuses on developer platforms as products to empower engineers and make teams and organizations drastically more effective. About Hangar DX (https://dx.community/) The Hangar is a community of senior DevOps engineers and senior software engineers, focused on enhancing the developer experience. This is a space where vetted, experienced professionals can exchange ideas, share hard-earned wisdom, troubleshoot issues, and help each other in their projects and careers. We invite developers who work in DX and platform teams at their respective companies, or who are interested in developer productivity.