Maybe the worst carryover from the commercial age is the notion of time monitoring. Managers really feel a powerful urge to measure one thing, and “time spent on a activity” turns into a strong shiny object that’s laborious to withstand. Thus, groups are sometimes required to trace the period of time it takes to repair every bug or full particular person duties. These occasions are then in contrast between builders to offer some measure of productiveness and a method of figuring out success. A decrease common bug-fixing time is sweet, proper? Or is it?
The worst metric of all
Time monitoring of software program builders is — in a phrase — terrible. No two bugs are alike, and inexperienced builders may be capable of shortly crank out fixes for a lot of simple bugs whereas extra skilled builders, who may usually be given the more difficult points, take longer. Or possibly the junior developer is assigned a bug that they’ll’t deal with? Worse, time monitoring encourages builders to attempt gaming the system. After they’re worrying about how lengthy a activity may take, they might keep away from those who may take longer than the “estimate” and all method of “non-productive” actions.
Don’t we’ve got to confess that there isn’t any solution to decide how lengthy any specific software program work unit ought to or will take? Having to account for each minute of the day merely creates unhealthy incentives to chop corners. It can also make a wise, succesful developer really feel anxious or involved for taking “too lengthy” to unravel difficult issues that have been purported to be an “simple, one-line change.”
