Author: Avya Chaudhary

Injecting Agile software development principles into your SDLC helps unlock greater adaptability, agility, performance, and value for all stakeholders — customers, organizations, and investors. 

As per a report, 72% of people are very satisfied or somewhat satisfied with adopting Agile development practices. But the remaining are not that happy with the outcomes. 42% quote inadequate leadership participation as the barrier to successful agile delivery. Conflict with the existing organizational culture, resistance to change, heterogeneous SDLC practices, and insufficient training and experience are some other challenges staring into the eyes of those who aspire to go agile. 

Marc Andreesen was one of the first few to foresee the recent software boom, with his long-standing quote — “In the future, every company will become a software company.” While the pandemic years fit perfectly into his predictions, the real question is: Where does all this software come from?

The answer is your developers. Software engineering teams are the frontrunner of the current software sprawl. Much has been already talked about what developers bring to modern software development and the SaaS world. They work at the intersection of product, business, and customer requirements, ensuring robust product delivery to end users with continuous feedback from all sides. The list of features worked by devs gets longer every month, making them an integral part of any product growth. 

"How is the release pipeline going?" is a common CTO-EM conversation today. However, whether the two tech leaders find a common language to answer this question- that's what we will talk about. 

A common pattern across engineering managers is their struggle in quantifying 'real' metrics on engineering work. Mostly, it is about the difference in priorities for EM vs. C-suite; the other times, it is about disagreements over 'what' needs to be measured- the product, process, or both.  

Engineering success inevitably translates into product success. But how can engineering success be measured? How do teams introspect on the project's progress and find ways to steer through deadlines with software quality intact? The answer is Engineering KPIs. Most managers track engineering KPIs within a specific, contextual framework like the SPACE research. But the model is not omnipresent, and most teams want to evolve further and have personalized goals and trackers in place.

Using specific measurement frameworks becomes crucial with constantly evolving engineering teams’ work processes —effort alignment, improving work processes, and maximizing efficiency. But why spend so much time tracking some metrics? Today, we will cover the importance of engineering KPIs and which 10 KPIs you should look for. 

Software development costs an estimated 63% of a project's budget, making developers and their work performances a center point of executive discussions. Initially, organizations resorted to a more mechanical approach of locating the work done by their devs- through average lines of code written or bugs fixed per day. However, the metrics don't convey the full picture of the software development lifecycle. 

Teams with high productivity and process efficiency have taken a more provocative approach by focusing on the 'how' of development; developer behavior, collaboration patterns, code reviews, and team dynamics. Identifying and eliminating bottlenecks helps the team work on their core competencies and be more productive.

Transitioning to a managerial role could be hard. One day, you are developing and reviewing code. The next day, you are handling not just individuals but a multitude of teams, evolving into a people person and leading your squad toward maximum productivity. Each engineering manager is different, and so are their roles, responsibilities, and ideas to better their teams. However, across the spectrum, here are the common challenges every engineering manager faces as they step up their software journey.

What Does an Engineering Manager Do?

Apart from what an EM’s JD says, the ultimate goal of the position is the same throughout: helping devs become masters of their work. However, as a manager, the results and work items are not as tangible as an engineer’s. An EM ideally spends time leading retros, mentoring, and managing the well-being of team members. It is not easy to create a direct commit log for managers, much like engineers. Yet, there are some common grounds for most engineering managers across three categories: 

Static code analysis is a method of debugging that involves reviewing source code prior to running a program. It is accomplished by comparing a set of code against one set or several sets of coding rules. Static code analysis is frequently done as part of software testing (also known as white-box testing) during the security development lifecycle's implementation phase (SDL).

What Is Static Code Analysis?

In many different development environments, static code analysis software is used to perform an automated standardization test. Code legibility is a common concern among developers. If a developer writes a chunk of code that is sent to a software tester, the code should be understandable and digestible. 

The software development process is complex. It involves various tasks that need to be distributed among teams and completed within a designated time frame. Managers need to be on top of the software development process and establish a workflow that can be traced, as mismanagement of even a minuscule size can lead teams to compromise on deadlines. This is where a metric like Sprint Velocity can help set achievable targets and gain visibility into the process. 

What Is Sprint Velocity?

In the agile development framework, teams divide the available time into smaller durations or sprints, which can be certain days or weeks. The number of completed tasks at the end of each sprint is the velocity of that particular sprint, and the average velocity value across these sprints is the sprint velocity of the entire development process. Calculating sprint velocity is crucial in the development process as it determines the success rate in achieving deadlines. Apart from helping determine achievable deadlines, the sprint velocity metric also finds other applications in the agile development process and in the developer's well-being. 

Developer productivity has become a global phenomenon, with even the trillion-dollar giant Google talking about it. Recently, Google's Pichai talked about the endless, million-dollar productivity crisis, with an ambitious goal to up the numbers by 20%. However, Google isn't the first or the last tech company to talk about EngProd. 

Engineering hirings are a mess despite an uptick in the average software developer's salary. Even though 2022 produced 373 tech unicorns, the year also saw the great engineering resignation kicking in. This structural dualism in tech has a core reason: The developers are unhappy, unsatisfied, and, even somewhere, unproductive.