Rethinking Productivity in Software Engineering

© The Author(s) 2019

C. Sadowski, T. Zimmermann (eds.)Rethinking Productivity in Software Engineeringhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-4221-6_3

3. Why We Should Not Measure Productivity

Andrew J. Ko¹ 

(1)

University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, USA

 

Software moves faster every year. Markets shift rapidly, releases are ever more frequent, and languages, APIs, and platforms evolve at a relentless pace. And so the interest in productivity, both by developers who want to keep up with these changes and by managers and organizations that need to compete, appears entirely rational. Moreover, improving software faster holds even greater promise to the rest of humanity: getting more work done with less effort may mean an increased quality of life for ...