Engineering Leadership: The Hard Parts

Chapter 10. Metrics That Matter for Engineering Teams

You’re sitting in a meeting, and someone asks, “How’s the engineering team doing?” There are a few things that happen next. Firstly, your stomach drops. Because explaining engineering productivity is complicated—especially to people whose understanding of the work of engineering is murky at best. Secondly, measuring that work is challenging. And thirdly, measuring it in a revelatory way is even harder. Suddenly, everyone is staring at dashboards full of squiggly lines going up and down, like a heart monitor during a horror movie. Some numbers are green, some are red, and nobody quite knows what any of it means for the actual health of your product or team.

If this scenario sounds familiar, you’re not alone. The world of software engineering metrics can feel like navigating a maze with a broken compass. There are countless things you could measure, but figuring out what you should measure and how to interpret those measurements without losing your mind is tricky.

In this chapter, we will cut through the noise and discuss metrics that truly matter. These aren’t vanity metrics that look impressive in a slide deck but tell you nothing useful, and they aren’t metrics that make teams feel like an overeager hall monitor is watching them. Here, we will introduce you to the real and meaningful measurements that help you understand what’s happening, identify problems before they escalate, and make informed decisions about where to focus ...