How do you track the performance of your IT development team?
KPIs are specific measures used to evaluate the performance of a company. Quality requires constant monitoring. In the software development sphere, everyone is inclined to measure KPIs.
The right KPIs will help you evaluate the effectiveness of your development team and give you meaningful information that is essential for integrating improvements into the web project. Setting KPIs is especially useful if you are working with a remote team or outsourcing the development project. In addition, using fixed metrics to track the team’s performance helps reduce micromanagement.
In this article, we will first define what KPIs are, and then, we will share with you which KPIs Vietnam offshore software development center uses the most.
What are KPIs?
A KPI, a Key Performance Indicator, is a measurable value that demonstrates the effectiveness with which a company achieves its main business objectives. They allow:
- To guide strategic and operational improvements.
- To create an analytical basis for decision-making.
- To focus attention on what matters most.
For example, a “community management” team may have key performance indicators for retweets or number of followers gained per week. These are crucial metrics that determine whether their goals are being met.
But in addition to staying on track to meet goals, KPIs have other benefits as well. Here are some examples:
Empowering employees
Key performance indicators, or KPIs, allow for tracking progress down to an individual level. If a sales team’s KPI is the number of monthly sales per person, team leaders can easily understand how much each person is contributing to the department’s success by meeting or not meeting their goals.
Allow managers to adapt
Once managers have KPIs in place, it’s easier to adjust strategy if the team or individuals aren’t meeting their goals. This doesn’t necessarily mean firing the lowest performers, but rather providing additional training and guidance to those who are struggling.
Clearly define goals
It is likely that individuals view success differently. For example, if an IT team member and an accountant are working together on a project, they will likely measure success differently. KPIs set a common standard and goals for all collaborators, which helps clarify expectations and priorities up front.
Assessing the health of a business
KPIs help companies to objectively see the performance of the organization. Financial metrics, for example, show profitability, while employee retention rates can indicate the strength of the company culture.
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The most relevant KPIs in IT development
KPIs that concern developer productivity
The important KPIs that fall into this category directly relate to the efficiency of the team in the software development process. They give you an idea of how much time and work the developers are investing in the software project.
Velocity
This is the amount of work the development team can complete in a single sprint. In general, the higher the velocity, the more functional the team is. Therefore, it allows you to estimate the productivity level of your team.
The velocity of the team can be measured by the number of completed tasks or stories. It is important to note that it will take about three sprints before you get an idea of the average velocity of a development team. While this information is a useful measure of team performance, it does not highlight individual performance or the level of customer satisfaction with the product.
Release Burnout
This KPI quantifies the progress of releases. It guides software teams in managing product releases, helping them assess whether they are ahead of schedule, on time, or behind schedule. It is a useful metric for informing customers of early or late releases.
Cycle Time
Cycle time is the time spent on a particular task. It is used to evaluate the efficiency of the software development process. In addition, cycle time helps you estimate how long it will take your software team to achieve future tasks.
Sprint Burnout
Sprint burnout is a more specific metric that assesses the actual amount of work completed in a single sprint or iteration. It provides more information than velocity, which is an estimate calculated from several averages.
KPIs that concern software performance
These KPIs allow companies to evaluate and prioritize problems within software development projects. They are useful for management, debugging, performance and cost estimation. Some examples include:
Throughput
Throughput is similar to velocity. It measures the number of features, tasks, bugs, and other activities completed in a given period of time. It allows the project management team to assess how team members are using their time and workload.
Defect Metrics
Software defects are among the major headaches of a developer because they cause a difference between what is expected and what is delivered. Therefore, the software tester must track and fix as many defects as possible. In an attempt to meet the high demands for software quality, developers rely on a set of metrics to evaluate their efforts when dealing with discrepancies and errors.
Vulnerability
Vulnerability is a performance metric that measures the extent of weaknesses in a software system that can be exploited by a malicious person to perform unauthorized actions. The higher the vulnerability, the more security problems the software has.
Actual Security Incidents
This measure refers to the number of attempts to gain unauthorized access, disclose, use, modify, or destroy information in a software system. Security incidents can result in compromised user accounts, denial of service, theft, etc. This is a critical metric because it helps you determine how secure your software is and offers potential mitigation measures.
Mean Time to Detect Defects and Mean Time to Repair
Mean Time to Defect Detection (MTTD) refers to the average time it takes to find a system software malfunction. It is the time between when a problem occurs and when the development team detects it. It is critical to reduce its value, as a longer MTTR can result in longer downtime, which in turn hurts other business metrics such as customer satisfaction. Another KPI is mean time to repair (MTTR). This is the time interval between the discovery of a security breach and the deployment of a solution. A lower MTTR value implies that the development team’s performance is becoming progressively more proficient at resolving software security issues such as bugs.
Availability
This is the amount of time the software is functional, expressed as a percentage of the total time it should be running. High-end availability features allow the software to remain operational even in the event of a failure. They typically isolate the failed part and continue to operate at reduced capacity. In contrast, lower-performing systems may fail and become unable to operate.
Serviceability
Also known as maintainability, this refers to the ease and speed with which a software system can be maintained or repaired. It should be noted that serviceability and availability are closely related. If the time required for the former decreases, the latter increases.
For example, some software systems are programmed to automatically call the service center in case of a failure. The idea behind this is to ensure appropriate repair efforts with as little disruption to normal services as possible.