Discussion about this post

User's avatar
Michael Banner's avatar

Interesting read, thanks for sharing.

I'm with you in that I believe business impact is a massive one to measure. If anything, delivery of value to the business (and ultimately end users) is what really matters here. Business value can include things like:

- cost saving (e.g. optimising infra usage/cost)

- revenue growth (e.g. building features that drive customer acquisition or retention)

- reducing tech debt (e.g. making the systems more maintainable)

- improving operational efficiency (e.g. creating automations or enhancing tooling to reduce waste)

As you say, there's no one size fits all and that's the problem. Even with the above in mind, how would one quantify someone being more or less productive if they tackled tonnes of tech debt vs. shaving $1m off infra costs?

As for using PRs as a measure, I won't open that can of worms just yet.

Expand full comment
Gilad Naor's avatar

Thanks for putting this review together, it’s very helpful.

I think that the most important place to start is by asking the most important question: “What problem are you trying to solve?” As you mentioned at the start, different people will have different answers.

The problem is that whatever system you end up using, is the system that everyone will latch on to. So, how you frame and communicate the metrics is extremely important.

In my mind, one of the key pillars is different than the others: Business Impact.

All the other pillars are upstream of Business Impact.

- Slow to deliver? Then slow to create business impact.

- Low quality? Then less business impact.

- Doesn’t provide individual growth? Then less growth and less business impact.

- Low care? Lower retention and morale, hence less business impact.

And on the flip side, you can have a fast, high quality dev team that works on challenge projects that they love. And they create absolutely no business impact.

Expand full comment
6 more comments...

No posts