What is developer productivity?
Developer productivity measures how efficiently a developer or team works within a certain period of time. Efficiency refers to all processes in the software development lifecycle. The outcome should be beneficial for a business.
Dev Productivity can be represented using many different metrics. But beware: software development is a complex task. This makes measurement difficult and often leads to discussions between managers and team leads.
The selection of metrics must therefore be well thought out. Using the wrong performance indicators can be highly detrimental. Example: Measurement of “Lines of code written”. On the surface, this may be seen by management as a good performance indicator. However, it does not generate any valuable insights. In the worst case, developers “game” this metric and intentionally write longer code. And iIn the worst case, this in turn affects the performance of the product.
Better: focus on quality. Even better: create an environment in which blockers can be easily identified and attempts are made to eliminate them quickly.
A simple way to identify blockers: Regularly send out a survey to developers, identify the top blockers and work on these blockers. We have also summarized typical time wasters in our article “7 ways to increase developer productivity – a CEO’s perspective”.
Measuring productivity
Of course, tools and frameworks can also help to increase productivity and to display KPIs in a fancy dashboard.
Recognized frameworks for measuring developer productivity are

