Today, software development management is targeted at team performance, motivation, progress, and customer expectations in the present world. Commitment to design quality products depends greatly on the correct set of software development KPIs with great analytics. However, measuring your team performance through software development metrics as a custom software agency is an important step toward meeting the objectives and goals you set for yourself and your business.
When you write down your measurable goals as a custom software developer, there is 60% assurance that you will accomplish them. Being resourceful isn’t just having resources but strategizing how to use them. In software development companies and technical work settings, key performance indicators are a great method to stay accountable for goal settings. Software development KPIs are useful for the software development process because they can be exhaustive and complex. Meeting customers’ project requirements and satisfying clients are the priority of custom software development firms, which is only achievable through software development metrics.
In this article, you will learn what software development KPI is, custom software development metrics, the quality metrics, and the Importance of metrics in custom software development.
What Is a Software Development KPI?
Key performance indicators (KPI) are the values used to measure the overall performance of a custom software development company, and it is also used to align business objectives in software development. Most of the time, the key performance indicator is used to measure the deployment, number of lines of code, and commits. But in many cases, these are not accurate and may not provide the actual objectives. So one of the best factors in setting custom software development KPIs is the quality of the target of custom software developers.
Key performance indicators help indicate how well your team development efforts align with your client’s business objectives. For all businesses picking the right software, metric is the best step that determines success because choosing the wrong metrics may lead to the failure of the development team.
The traditional custom software development metric still works for development teams that use the waterfall model for their development project. However, modern software development now uses agile software to scale better and faster. The agile process of the modern metric centers on application development with deployment and continuous delivery. Software development KPI should rely on custom software development firm scalability because it is the component for performance measures.
Why Are Metrics Important in Software Development?
Creating custom software development KPIs that align with the commitment and goals of a team helps to ensure high-quality software. In cases where problems occur and a metric is already set, it will help identify the issue and highlight the important ones.
Setting metrics also increases custom software development firm productivity. It recognizes the collective effort and helps developers identify the area to focus on and fix necessary issues.
Setting custom software development KPIs for your team will help measure your team’s progress and increase your ROI.
It is also necessary to determine if a KPI is correct for your team; to do this, you need to consider some things. Ensure your key performance indicator is SMART. This means they should;
- Be calculated for SPECIFIC purposes.
- Have a MEASURABLE entity
- Be ACHIEVABLE
- Be RELEVANT to the performance.
- Be TIME constraint.
Top KPIs for custom software development
Team velocity
One of the most important custom software development KPIs is team velocity. Generally, development is divided into a sprint, which focuses on some specific task. Each of these sprints must be completed by the end of each working day, and during a sprint, only velocity metrics can be used.
There are also tons of ways to measure velocity. It can measure the amount of effort and work into particular software development. Knowing this will help the development team estimate the time it will take to build and deliver a particular software product. Doing this will help you get an idea of your team’s goal.
Important tips for measuring velocity
- Suppose velocity stays consistent after varieties of sprints, then consider incorporating other factors into the calculation.
- The team velocity can be differently calculated when the multiple tasks are removed and added from the calculation.
- In cases where you want forecasting on velocity, you can use three sprints to predict the future performance of your team.
Sprint Burndown
Most software development companies use this metric because it organizes product development that divides into time intervals. This sprint burndown has a chart and this chart is a visual representation of your team workflow. It reveals the amount of work that has been completed and the ones yet to be done. Normally, it should be averaged to show the lowest work hours and several tasks. Sprint burndown metrics also help keep track of your team’s performance if it doesn’t match your expectations.
Cycle Time
A cycle time is also a chart metric for software development and it reveals the time that a development project will be completed. It reveals the time that a task will be finished. This is beneficial because knowing when your team will finish a particular task will help to improve their performance. It also helps you to know the amount of work to do next time. You can also stack all the cycles for a specific period and compare them to other data to understand the quality of the project.
Cumulative Flow
Cumulative flow is also a visual diagram and a metric in software development that shows the status of all tasks that are in progress. This metric uses a color scheme that shows different stages of a development project. The aim and target of this metric and chart are to help provide a visual representation of how projects and tasks are distributed in different stages.
This diagram will then show the relationship between the number of tasks and the time on the project. It helps to highlight all stages of the work process, showing the percentage of the task that has been done and the ones in review. A cumulative flow chart can help keep track of teamwork output and keep them accountable for consistent good performance. It is a great tool to focus on all project areas from progress, in, and finished.
Code Coverage
Code coverage metric is a metric that measures the number of lines of code that are executed during a test. It is used to evaluate continuous test-driven development practice and delivery process. In this case, don’t overestimate the number of code lines, and calling a line of code isn’t enough to end a test. It should rather be used to highlight the code.
However, achieving 100% code coverage doesn’t guarantee that code has been tested thoroughly; it only suggests that it is needed to prioritize the important features and codebase in project development.
Conclusion
The custom software development metrics and KPI outlined are what you shouldn’t ignore to scale your business and enhance your custom software development process. To ensure that your software KPI is intact and well measured, it is best to contact Hanna Shnaider of Fortyseven professional company because she is the best at what she does. She is immensely qualified and has expert experience in making use of KPIs.
