On Developer Productivity
A while back, a group of us in the Winter Tech Forum community were discussing the age old question: how to measure developer productivity (without making developers hate life). It is hard to do without becoming big brother. While I don't have a neat answer, below are some things I have experimented with. Most of these don't involve "measurement" of the inefficiency. In my experience, measurement is very difficult. In some cases it may be worthwhile, but you can get a lot of mileage out of fixing things that you know cut down on distractions. Let people work on things they care about. If developers people are working on something they believe in/are excited about, output will go up. Give them control & autonomy, and they'll run through a wall for you. How does the team choose work? I have worked on teams in which sales people went directly to developers when they needed something. So, everyone was put...