Codermetrics

Name

Utility

Synopsis

Purpose

Measure how many assigned tasks each coder completes.

Formula

Utility = Number of tasks completed

Example

Coder A completes the following tasks in two development iterations:

Iteration 1: Task 1 with Complexity 3

Iteration 1: Task 2 with Complexity 2

Iteration 1: Task 3 with Complexity 4

Iteration 2: Task 4 with Complexity 1

Iteration 2: Task 5 with Complexity 4

Iteration 2: Task 6 with Complexity 2

Iteration 2: Task 7 with Complexity 1

For Iterations 1 and 2, calculate Utility as the number of completed tasks:

Utility Iteration 1 = 3

Utility Iteration 2 = 4

Having calculated the Utility per iteration, you can then calculate Total Utility or Average Utility per Iteration:

Total Utility = 3 + 4 = 7

Average Utility = (3 + 4) / 2 = 3.5

Notes

Along with Points, Utility is the other basic metric for the amount of work coders are doing on assigned tasks. Whereas Points is based on the complexity rating of each task, Utility is a pure count of the number of tasks completed. As shown in Table 4-3, coders may have lower Point totals but higher Utility. Such coders may be equally or more productive than coders with higher Point totals. Higher Utility numbers may indicate that they are assigned different types of tasks and are productive in different ways. It will be useful to look at Points and Utility in combination with other metrics, in order to get a more complete picture of each coder’s contributions.

Table 4-3. Coder productivity shown by the complexity of tasks (Points) and ...