My Response To The NONSENSE McKinsey Article On Developer Productivity

Consulting group McKinsey & Company have recently published an article called “Yes you can measure software developer productivity” which has been widely criticised. Grady Booth said “It’s rubbish”, Kent Back said “The report is so absurd and naive that it makes no sense to critique it in detail” and Daniel Terhorst-North said, “Don’t try to measure the individual contribution of a unit in a complex adaptive system, because the premise of the question is flawed”.

In this episode software engineer and author, Dave Farley joins in with the critique, and while agreeing with Kent Beck on most things, does look at the report in some detail to critique it. He finds that the McKinsey developer productivity article is as useless and ill-informed as the reactions of many other industry experts would suggest.

-

⭐ PATREON:

Join the Continuous Delivery community and access extra perks & content!

JOIN HERE and start your free trial to see if you like it! There are then options from just £2 a month ➡️ https://bit.ly/ContinuousDeliveryPatreon

-

👕 T-SHIRTS:

A fan of the T-shirts I wear in my videos? Grab your own, at reduced prices EXCLUSIVE TO CONTINUOUS DELIVERY FOLLOWERS! Get money off the already reasonably priced t-shirts!

🔗 Check out their collection HERE: ➡️ https://bit.ly/3vTkWy3
🚨 DON'T FORGET TO USE THIS DISCOUNT CODE: ContinuousDelivery

-

🖇 LINKS:

"Yes, you can measure software developer productivity" by McKinsey & Company ➡️ https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/t...

“The DORA Metrics"m ➡️ https://dora.dev/

“What Makes a Great Team at Google” ➡️ https://rework.withgoogle.com/print/g...

"Kent Beck & Gergely Orosz's Response" ➡️ https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer....

“The Worst Programmer I know”, by Dan Terhorst-North ➡️ https://dannorth.net/2023/09/02/the-w...

“McKinsey says they can measure developer productivity. Kent Beck says they can’t” ➡️ https://shiftmag.dev/measuring-develo...

"The SPACE Metrics" ➡️ https://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=3...

-

BOOKS:

📖 Dave’s NEW BOOK "Modern Software Engineering" is available as paperback, or kindle here ➡️ https://amzn.to/3DwdwT3
and NOW as an AUDIOBOOK available on iTunes, Amazon and Audible.

📖 The original, award-winning "Continuous Delivery" book by Dave Farley and Jez Humble ➡️ https://amzn.to/2WxRYmx

📖 "Continuous Delivery Pipelines" by Dave Farley
Paperback ➡️ https://amzn.to/3gIULlA
ebook version ➡️ https://leanpub.com/cd-pipelines

NOTE: If you click on one of the Amazon Affiliate links and buy the book, Continuous Delivery Ltd. will get a small fee for the recommendation with NO increase in cost to you.

-

CHANNEL SPONSORS:

Equal Experts is a product software development consultancy with a network of over 1,000 experienced technology consultants globally. They increase the pace of innovation by using modern software engineering practices that embrace Continuous Delivery, Security, and Operability from the outset ➡️ https://bit.ly/3ASy8n0

Tricentis is an AI-powered platform helping you to deliver digital innovation faster and with less risk by providing a fundamentally better approach to test automation. Discover the power of continuous testing with Tricentis. ➡️ https://bit.ly/TricentisCD

TransFICC provides low-latency connectivity, automated trading workflows and e-trading systems for Fixed Income and Derivatives. TransFICC resolves the issue of market fragmentation by providing banks and asset managers with a unified low-latency, robust and scalable API, which provides connectivity to multiple trading venues while supporting numerous complex workflows across asset classes such as Rates and Credit Bonds, Repos, Mortgage-Backed Securities and Interest Rate Swaps ➡️ https://transficc.com

#softwareengineer #software #developer #productivity #mckinsey