Measuring Software Productivity
An interesting Twitter conversation I had with Martin Fowler yesterday.
Martin: Just ran into a request to measure productivity of software projects using Line of Code per hour. *sobs* #zombieswontdie
Me: @martinfowler But software productivity IS measurable, in context. http://bit.ly/9ZqidP
Martin: @sjcarriere I disagree: http://www.martinfowler.com/bliki/CannotMeasureProductivity.html
Me: @martinfowler I expected.
I believe there are meaningful measures that we can use to improve productivity within the software process.
Martin: @sjcarriere true, but that’s very different to saying you can measure productivity itself.
Me: @martinfowler You have to measure something to improve it. For software productivity, it starts with the long-term value of the output.
(Aside: there’s got to be a better way to transcribe Twitter conversations…)
Apropos: http://tinyurl.com/DilbertProgress