Other Considerations

Measuring individuals

Numerous fields have attempted to measure productivity of individuals, including medicine, education, and software. In all cases, there is no valid way to measure individual productivity. The best doctors might take on the most challenging patients; they can have lower cure rates than other doctors, even though they are the best. The best teachers might work in the most difficult schools; their students might have lower test scores, even if the teachers are better. The best software developers might get assigned the most complex work, in which case their apparent productivity will be lower than average developers.

Differences in technical task assignments, multi-tasking across multiple projects, interpersonal dynamics with other team members, level of stakeholder support for their projects, time spent mentoring other staff members, and countless other factors affect each individual’s output. Outside of research settings, software projects contain too many confounding variables to allow for meaningful productivity measurements of individuals.

Agile’s focus is on the team, rather than on individuals. Team-level measures are more culturally consistent with Agile, and they’re also much more valid