McKinsey recently released an article with the perfectly tuned click-bait title, “Yes, you can measure software developer productivity”. That sounds amazing. But you should skip the report and spend your time reading this great article from Kent Beck and Gergely Orosz that digs into the flaws of McKinsey’s approach, addresses why the temptation to say “this is an impossible problem developers are special” is a nonstarter, and finally goes on to explain how to better think about this problem and what possible solutions could be. This is one of the better things I’ve read recently. They just released the second part today, so if you’re seeing this for the first time you don’t even need to wait to read it all!
