What Developer Productivity Engineering Is
Treating the toolchain as a product with users and performance requirements, rather than as plumbing that someone will fix when it breaks.
Explainer
Foundations
Waiting is the subject. Which loops matter, what the delay actually costs beyond the minutes, and the boundary this whole field has to hold: the system is measurable, the people are not the target.
6 notes
The Cost of Waiting
Slow feedback does not cost the time it takes. It costs the context switch, the batching it encourages, and the checks people stop running.
Analysis
The Loops, Ranked
A developer runs several feedback loops a day, at different frequencies. Which ones to optimise first, and the one almost nobody measures.
Reference
What to Measure
A short set of system measures that respond to work, and the popular ones that measure activity while the experience stays where it was.
Reference
Measuring the System, Not the Person
Individual developer metrics have a poor record and a real cost. Why they fail, what they break, and what to use instead.
Analysis
Making the Case Without Overclaiming
Time-saved calculations do not survive scrutiny and damage credibility. What to build the argument on instead.
Analysis