15 ms·

I'm trying to disentangle this from the established / proven / trusted "dx core 4" (ask your local devops person if you don't recognise the name). I found "ini

I'm trying to disentangle this from the established / proven / trusted "dx core 4" (ask your local devops person if you don't recognise the name). I found "initiatives" was added. What does this new initiatives measure bring. Why do we care about otherwise unqualified initiatives, how do i know that doesn't just mean using the other 4 proven measures as cover for pushing pet projects without merit? I'm super cynical tonight it seems. This is just rubbing me up the wrong way i guess and i can't really put my finger on why.

gsdatta 2mo ago
I know I'm biased but Core 4 (and similar) rub me the wrong way – measuring individual developers as the atomic unit IMO is always meaningless. It's a proxy for organizational health but not directly correlated. Especially now with AI, what do metrics like "prs/engineer" even mean when you have background agents open/reviewing/releasing PRs without human intervention? what is the right unit for measuring health of the org? FWIW I write a lot more about "why not existing frameworks" in depth in the full paper. Initiatives are defined specifically as non-productive, technical leverage-producing initiatives that affect the org's health as a whole and are often left behind. For example, we recently ran an initiative around feature flag cleanups and full rollouts that we tracked religiously during our weekly OpEx review – without which we probably would not have had the same success with that cleanup initiative. I understand your cynicism with "yet another framework" but (and I know I'm biased) this framework is intimately tied to ops reviews as a mechanism for both measurement and organizational change.
- CraigJPerry 2mo ago
  > Core 4 (and similar) rub me the wrong way – measuring individual developers as the atomic unit IMO is always meaningless And From: https://getdx.com/research/measuring-developer-productivity-with-the-dx-core-4/ https://getdx.com/research/measuring-developer-productivity-... > Diffs per engineer* > > * Not at individual level Are you guys agreeing or disagreeing with each other?
  - gsdatta 2mo ago
    Candidly, we're disagreeing. The framework is explicitly titled "Measuring developer productivity with the DX Core 4". Diffs/engineer, even if not at the individual level, is still meant as a proxy for individual throughput. The question they are trying to answer is "how do we make Ganesh X% more productive?" My argument is that that is the wrong question to be trying to optimize for, regardless of how you measure it. It also does not capture the risk dimensions with AI adoption (and the reduction in humans-in-the-loop) which my paper tries to directly address.

gsdatta 2mo ago

I know I'm biased but Core 4 (and similar) rub me the wrong way – measuring individual developers as the atomic unit IMO is always meaningless. It's a proxy for organizational health but not directly correlated. Especially now with AI, what do metrics like "prs/engineer" even mean when you have background agents open/reviewing/releasing PRs without human intervention? what is the right unit for measuring health of the org? FWIW I write a lot more about "why not existing frameworks" in depth in the full paper. Initiatives are defined specifically as non-productive, technical leverage-producing initiatives that affect the org's health as a whole and are often left behind. For example, we recently ran an initiative around feature flag cleanups and full rollouts that we tracked religiously during our weekly OpEx review – without which we probably would not have had the same success with that cleanup initiative. I understand your cynicism with "yet another framework" but (and I know I'm biased) this framework is intimately tied to ops reviews as a mechanism for both measurement and organizational change.

CraigJPerry 2mo ago
> Core 4 (and similar) rub me the wrong way – measuring individual developers as the atomic unit IMO is always meaningless And From: https://getdx.com/research/measuring-developer-productivity-with-the-dx-core-4/ https://getdx.com/research/measuring-developer-productivity-... > Diffs per engineer* > > * Not at individual level Are you guys agreeing or disagreeing with each other?
- gsdatta 2mo ago
  Candidly, we're disagreeing. The framework is explicitly titled "Measuring developer productivity with the DX Core 4". Diffs/engineer, even if not at the individual level, is still meant as a proxy for individual throughput. The question they are trying to answer is "how do we make Ganesh X% more productive?" My argument is that that is the wrong question to be trying to optimize for, regardless of how you measure it. It also does not capture the risk dimensions with AI adoption (and the reduction in humans-in-the-loop) which my paper tries to directly address.