My boss always asks for 'a number, any number' to show how the team is doing.<p>It makes sense since every other department has numbers to back their performance but it's tough to put one together for the engineering team.<p>Before you say "trusting your team is enough" ... it's really not.. My team trusts one another but its no replacement for having concrete data to:<p>1. Show the larger org
2. Help us improve internally
3. See the effects of our changes<p>Any suggestions?
Measuring developer productivity is notoriously difficult. No two tasks are the same, have the same scope or same pre-defined requirements. There seems to be lots of "bad ways" so I recommend if you need to measure "something" to pick a metric that you feel you want to improve and measure it. Your staff will naturally adjust to improve want is measured.<p>I want to challenge your assertion that every other department has numbers to back their performance. I am skeptical this is true. I don't image HR can bring a meaningful set of numbers to the table demonstrating month to month or quarterly improvement.