This document discusses software development productivity and explores ways to measure and improve it. It begins by noting that software is becoming increasingly important and examines past views of productivity focused on outputs like lines of code. More modern perspectives emphasize quality and validated learning. The document suggests individual software developers could track metrics like the percentage of their work released to users and number of commits over time to reflect on productivity. Integrating and analyzing application lifecycle data may help individuals understand what makes them most productive by learning from successes and failures. The overall message is that empowering individuals with data about their work can help continuously improve software development productivity.

1. What is software
development productivity,
anyway?
Gail C. Murphy
University of British Columbia
Tasktop Technologies Incorporated
@gail_murphy
Slides with non-shareable images are marked Presented at MSR 2013 at ICSE 2013

2. why care?
“software is
eating the world”
Marc Andreesen
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3. explore the idea
of software
development
productivity

4. gather your ideas
you have index card + pencil
on 3 separate lines
write a word or phrase
that captures software development
productivity to you
pass to a volunteer

5. this talk is
going to be a journey
not going to produce an answer
but hopefully will generate ideas

6. productivity
manufacturing
software
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7. productivity
output
input

8. workers as cogs

9. workers begin to be empowered
Henry Ford
1863-1947

10. unlimited potential in workers
“Why is it that
productivity
increases as quality
improves? Less
rework. There is no
better answer”

11. further worker empowerment
Toyota Production System:
lean manufacturing

12. productivity in manufacturing
workers as cogs
worker empowerment
workers key to productivity improvement

13. what about
productivity in
software development?

14. prediction of year
most problems could be
“programmed” in < 1
hour with one
day of training
1970s: output
measured in
handwritten
code
Boehm, “Software and Is
Impact: A Quantitative Assessment”

15. 1980s: output measured in functionality

16. essence over accidental
Brooks, “No Silver Bullet: Essence and
Accident in Software Engineering”
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17. focus on quality
and productivity
will follow
Capers Jones
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18. productivity in software development
??
??
output = lines of code? functionality?
does productivity follow quality?

19. software productivity today
lean software development
lean start-up
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20. economy.com:
-0.9% growth for
software from
1998 to 2003
no consensus on what
software productivity is
consensus software is more
complex

21. lean software development
• eliminate waste
• amplify learning
• decide as late as possible
• deliver as late as possible
• empower the team
• build integrity in
• see the whole
M. and T. Poppendieck, Lean Software Development

22. lean start-up
• validated learning
• build-measure-learn
• minimum viable product
• continuous deployment
• split testing
E. Ries, The Lean Startup

23. reflecting on individual
productivity
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24. manufacturing
software development/
start-ups
individual
empowerment
amplify/validated learning
how can we enable the individual to reflect upon:
validated learning
activities performed

25. validated learning
activities performed
individual
software
development
productivity
≈

26. how many stories did I work on (last
week, last month) that are in release?
maybe extract from issue system?
maybe trace code in release to
commits adding that code up issue
chain
extract/summarize story for
consumption
validated learning

27. mock-up
released user stories:
As a CONNECT adopter
sending Direct messages, I
want to receive failure
messages
...
completed, not released:
As a CONNECT adopter
sending Direct messages, I
need the ability to provide
a positive delivery
notification ...
29%
71%
Released Completed

28. over the last six months, how many
user stories I worked on survived A/B
testing?
extract last six months of stories
from issue repository
correlate to A/B testing results
validated learning

29. mock-up
e.g., tested user stories:
As a CONNECT adopter, I
find it annoying that
CONNECT urls are
inconsistent
e.g., A/B survivors:
As a CONNECT adopter I
want intallation
instructions...
0 5 10 15 20
6 mo. ago
5 mo. ago
4 mo. ago
3 mo. ago
2 mo. ago
1 mo. ago
Tested Survived

30. validated learning
activities performed
individual
software
development
productivity
≈

31. activities performed
over the period of validated learning...
how many commits did I make?
how many defects were filed for my
code?
how many times was the story
rewritten?
what was my ratio of edits to
selection events?

32. mock-up
0
25
50
75
100
6 mo. ago
4 mo. ago
2 mo. ago
Commits Defects
0 5 10 15 20
6 mo. ago
5 mo. ago
4 mo. ago
3 mo. ago
2 mo. ago
1 mo. ago
Tested Survived

33. what if it was simple...
to gather integrated application
lifecycle data
to summarize and analyze trends in
that data
to reflect upon when I as an
individual am
learning...
creating value...

34. validated learning
activities performed
individual
software
development
productivity
≈
just one comparative approach with flaws

35. what did you think
software development
productivity is,
anyway?

36. crowd-sourced at MSR 2013

37. software is eating the world
empower individuals to increase
productivity
reflect on lifecycle and
activity data to improve
individual productivity
@gail_murphy
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