How would you use JIRA to track Programmer efficiency?

David P Mancusi May 27, 2016

This question is in reference to Atlassian Documentation: Using JIRA for Project Management

I am a new Scrum Master with Project Management responsibilities and trying to find an article to understand how JIRA supports evaluating Programmer Efficiency; e.g. how many issues does a programmer retire individually during a selected period of time. I would use this to forecast completion so to communicate to business users expectations for version delivery. 

1 answer

0 votes
Peter T
Rising Star
Rising Star
Rising Stars are recognized for providing high-quality answers to other users. Rising Stars receive a certificate of achievement and are on the path to becoming Community Leaders.
May 27, 2016

Hi David,

interesting question. While it might be valid, I would strongly advice against it. You cannot compare issues and even if you rely on time-tracking you will find that the data is quite inconsistent.

Why would you want to do this on a person by person basis? In Agile the efficiency of a team can be evaluated using a technique called velocity.

Does  that make sense?

Cheers,
Peter T

 

David P Mancusi May 27, 2016

Peter,

I appreciate your response. My motives are simple. We’ve had difficulty with the quality of developers we’ve engaged. While is the midst of a very difficult delivery we discovered that one programmer was a consistent drag on others as they had oversold their capabilities. This happened after we went through the difficulty. We’re operating with some tight timelines to achieve version releases, so we need a way to evaluate whether a programmer is over their head from a capabilities perspective before it becomes an impact. So I'm looking for an individual evaluation rather than a team evaluation.

I have been giving thought to the variability of issues and was thinking I could leverage a formula like [(issue * agreed on difficulty) * # issues retired during a given period]. I am considering how rework would impact that measurement. I realize that this may not account for expected research time. I’m thinking that if a programmer is consistently not retiring issues/difficulty at the rate that the other programmers are developing at, perhaps it’s time for a talk to understand the root cause. I know I can do this leveraging Excel, but my goal is to leverage JIRA for everything I can.

I would actually be interested in understanding what metrics you would support from a Scrum Master perspective to identify where programmers may be running into challenges. How do you get JIRA to provide you this information?

Does this help?

Thanks!

Dave 

Suggest an answer

Log in or Sign up to answer
TAGS
AUG Leaders

Atlassian Community Events