LeadDev_Engineering_Team_Performance__LDMO__ ![rw-book-cover](https://readwise-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/media/reader/parsed_document_assets/101731970/mqo8ayDg4lCmSY2045v1Ar0oVx6l37DLXMOIeuA1WNA-cove_VUv8I7D.png) ## Metadata - Author: [[readwise.io]] - Full Title: LeadDev_Engineering_Team_Performance__LDMO__ - Category: #articles - Document Note: --- tags: - #EngineeringLeadership - #TeamPerformance - #ProductivityMetrics - #BusinessAlignment Author: LeadDev Source: LeadDev Engineering Team Performance Report Reference: https://leaddev.com date created: 2025-08-23 00:00 --- # Title: LeadDev Engineering Team Performance Report 2023 — A Holistic View of Measuring Engineering Impact ## Table of Contents: - [📚 References](#-references) - [📝 Summary](#-summary) - [📖 Main Content](#-main-content) - [🗒️ Notes](#-notes) - [📖 References](#-references-1) - [🗣️ Paraphrase](#-paraphrase) - [📰 Newsletter](#-newsletter) - [✅ Action Items](#-action-items) - [🧪 Hypotheses](#-hypotheses) - [📊 Methodology](#-methodology) - [❓ Questions](#-questions) - [🔮 Future Research](#-future-research) - [💡 Implications](#-implications) - [🧠 Learning Styles Assessment](#-learning-styles-assessment) - [📊 Accessibility Assessment](#-accessibility-assessment) - [🌍 DEIB Assessment](#-deib-assessment) - [✅ Logical validity](#-logical-validity) - [🔍 DARVO Analysis](#-darvo-analysis) - [🔍 SEO Evaluation](#-seo-evaluation) - [🎯 Conclusion](#-conclusion) ### 📚 References: - LeadDev Engineering Team Performance Report 2023 - DORA metrics (DevOps Research and Assessment) - SPACE framework (satisfaction, performance, activity, communication, efficiency) ## 📝 Summary: The report finds no single, universal way to measure software engineering team performance. Effective approaches blend outcome metrics (e.g., cycle time, deploy frequency) with team health indicators (well-being, cognitive load, collaboration). Goal-setting is dominated by quarterly OKRs, often combined with KPIs. Engineering leaders most often measure to improve velocity and identify bottlenecks rather than police individuals. The most useful productivity metric is cycle time; the most important performance method is meeting deadlines. User growth and user satisfaction are top signals for business impact. The biggest bottlenecks are lack of clarity/prioritization and staffing constraints. DORA and SPACE are widely recognized; among those familiar, roughly half consider them effective. ## 📖 Main Content: - Context: Organizations want objective ways to evaluate team performance, yet software work resists simplistic measurement. The report synthesizes survey results from 600+ engineering leaders across regions and roles. - Goal-setting and alignment: - Half set quarterly OKRs; a quarter combine OKRs + KPIs. - 88% report at least a “good” understanding of company strategy, but only 26% have a “complete” understanding—raising risk of misalignment in execution. - What gets measured: - Business impact: user growth and user satisfaction are most used; ROI and meeting SLOs follow. - Performance methods: meeting deadlines ranks highest, then productivity metrics; qualitative instruments like pulse/annual surveys rank lower. - Productivity metrics: cycle time is most useful, followed by deploy frequency and lead time. Days worked ranks lowest—effort ≠ outcomes. - Team health: 1:1s and continuous feedback are leaders’ preferred methods for gauging well-being; interest is rising in cognitive load, happiness, context switching. - Reporting and tools: - Reporting cadence varies: weekly (19%), monthly (22%), quarterly (23%). - Tools: GitLab and Jira dominate for reporting; dashboards are common; niche vendor adoption is comparatively low. - Work enablement tools: Jira, CI/CD, GitHub, dashboards, Slack are most cited; some also identify these as inhibitors—tools are context-dependent. - Collaboration and bottlenecks: - 75% coordinate with other teams weekly or daily. - Top collaboration challenges: prioritization, ownership/accountability, visibility—more so than synchronicity/remote work concerns. - Top bottlenecks: lack of clarity/prioritization and staffing. Metrics themselves rarely cited as bottlenecks. - Frameworks: - DORA and SPACE are the most recognized. Awareness varies; among those who know them, about half say they’re effective. - SPACE fills well-being/experience gaps left by outcome-centric metrics; both can be combined for a holistic view. Personal insights: - Measurement maturity correlates with clarity: without crisp goals and shared priorities, even good metrics mislead. - Cycle time’s primacy reflects its cross-functional diagnostic power—it surfaces delays in review, testing, dependencies, and scope. - Underweighting qualitative signals (pulse/annual surveys) risks missing early warnings of burnout or fragmentation. - Tool ambivalence suggests process and culture matter more than brand choices; instrumentation without shared norms creates noise. ### 🗒️ Notes - Foreword - No single silver-bullet metric; balance output and team health. - Leaders face cognitive load in choosing fit-for-context measures. - Goal-setting - Quarterly OKRs most common; OKRs+KPIs second. - Regional/role differences: directors more likely to blend OKRs with KPIs. - Only a quarter have complete understanding of strategy; senior leadership is main conduit for objectives. - Business impact metrics - Top: user growth, user satisfaction; then ROI; SLOs further down. - Additional signals used: revenue, ARR churn, NPS, social sentiment. - Measuring contribution - Mechanisms: quarterly reviews; teams set goals for manager review; code quality tracked by ~40%. - Reporting cadence: weekly/monthly/quarterly split. - Tools for reporting - GitLab/Jira most used; dashboards common; spreadsheets still present. - Main challenge is choosing the right metrics; resistance to measurement is lower than expected. - Collaboration and processes - Frequent cross-team coordination; challenges in prioritization, ownership, visibility. - Case study (Gorgias): reduced cognitive load via service-oriented architecture and visibility into bottlenecks. - Why measure? - Improve velocity and find bottlenecks trump personnel decisions. - Meeting deadlines is top method; productivity metrics next; surveys lower. - Productivity metrics - Most useful: cycle time, deploy frequency, lead time. - Least useful: days worked, story points as a business proxy. - Frameworks - DORA focuses on delivery outcomes; SPACE adds team experience/health. - Among informed respondents, ~50% rate both as effective/very effective. - Tools and processes for doing best work - Jira, CI/CD, GitHub, dashboards, Slack common. - Agile/Kanban/Scrum prevalent; DevOps and platform engineering rising. - Some tools/processes both enable and inhibit depending on implementation. - Bottlenecks - Lack of clarity/prioritization and staffing issues lead. - Working with other teams and brittle systems follow. - Final thoughts - Volatility and resource constraints persist. - Emphasis on well-being is growing; frameworks like SPACE can help operationalize it. ## 📖 References: - LeadDev Engineering Team Performance Report 2023 - “Accelerate: The Science of DevOps” (for DORA background) - “The SPACE of Developer Productivity” (Microsoft/GitHub/CMU) ## 🗣️ Paraphrase: - Original idea: “Any effective measure of team performance must account for both raw output data and developer team health.” - Paraphrase: A robust performance approach tracks delivery outcomes and the team’s well-being in tandem; focusing on only one gives an incomplete and potentially misleading picture. - Original idea: “By focusing on satisfaction, well-being, and collaboration alongside more traditional output metrics, engineering leaders can start to establish an effective way of measuring the overall performance of their engineering teams.” - Paraphrase: Leaders who pair experience metrics—happiness, health, and teamwork—with delivery indicators are best positioned to assess and improve holistic team performance. ## 📰 Newsletter: Learning web dev this week? Don’t just ship—measure what matters. In engineering orgs, cycle time topped the charts for most useful productivity metric, while user growth and satisfaction led the way for business impact. Framework fans: DORA remains strong, and SPACE adds the crucial developer experience layer. TL;DR: goals first (quarterly OKRs are still king), diagnostics - Summary: The LeadDev Engineering Team Performance Report 2023 discusses the challenges of measuring and optimizing software engineering team performance. Despite the existence of various frameworks, there is still no single way to measure team performance, as each organization has different goals to optimize for. The report includes insights from engineering managers at companies like Etsy, Shopify, and Stripe, as well as a survey of over 600 engineering managers. The findings emphasize the importance of setting goals, measuring business outcomes, developer productivity, and developer experience. The report also explores the tools and metrics used to measure team performance, as well as the coordination and collaboration between teams. - URL: https://readwise.io/reader/document_raw_content/101731970 Full text of this document omitted because this document is a PDF [Download original file →](https://readwise.io/reader/document_raw_content/101731970), LeadDev_Engineering_Team_Performance__LDMO__, readwise.io, 01het4qw6webe9yxzy3vwk0nj6.