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_6

6. Individual, Team, Organization, and Market: Four Lenses of Productivity

Andrew J. Ko¹ 

(1)

University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, USA

 

When we think about productivity in software development, it’s reasonable to start with a basic concept of work per unit of effort. The more work a developer accomplishes with their efforts, the better.

But when researchers have investigated how developers think about productivity, some surprising nuances surface about what software engineering “work” actually is and at what level this work should be considered [14]. In particular, there are four lenses through which ...