One of the big concerns of companies that employ software engineers has been how to measure the productivity of these people. From a business standpoint, the idea is that one should find ways to maximize the work done by their employees. However, it is difficult to evaluate how this maximization process would happen if no one knows how to measure it.

Performance measurement in the software world is complicated by several issues. For starters, the metrics that have been used by the industry are hardly useful. Here are some examples:

• KLOC (thousands of lines of code): is virtually useless, because it can be easily inflated, and correlates inversely with readability. If you hired a civil engineer, would you pay him by the amount of concrete he used in a building?
• number of functions: similarly to the previous one, it can be easily gambled, because one can create very small functions instead of longer ones.
• number of bugs closed: some developers are evaluated by the number of bugs the were able to close. This can however generate a culture of bug proliferation.
• number of features: probably a more useful way to measure productivity. However, it is difficult to quantify how hard to implement a feature is (for example, generating a report versus writing a compiler optimization step). Also, quality of the feature must be considered as part of the equation. While bug free software is rare, but # of bugs should be as low as possible through careful testing.

In general, the problem of measuring software engineers based on any of the measures described above is that they are smart people. If you give incentives, for example, for writing more lines of code, developers will find creative ways to create more lines than necessary. It is just a fact of life: people align themselves with the rewards.

The conclusion is that measuring productivity is as complicated in software as in any other area of engineering. For example, how can you measure if a mechanical engineer is productive? Maybe by the quality of projects that he finished, but that is not a quickly applicable metric. Sometimes, companies want to look at the job of a software developer as if he or she were a writer — who is payed by the number of words written in a day. That model doesn’t scale, because different pieces of software have different difficulties. Some parts of a program have to be rewritten dozens of times until they are correct. Other parts are pure repetition.

If a comparison needs to be made someone that writes, probably the best model would be a mathematician. A mathematician writes papers, but productivity is not just a matter of typing speed. Mathematicians need to create “bug free” theorems, which take lots of time and craft to write.

The best solution I have seen to this kind of problem is: get smart people to work together, and provide them with a direction. This is how most of the good software we know was created. In fact, having smart and goal oriented people is probably just what you need, because sometimes the directions proposed by business people are not right. It is more interesting to have the right result than a monster that was created according to the view of a clueless manager.

The good news is that some companies already know this lesson. This is the way Google “manages” its developers, and other companies like Facebook, and other startups are following the lead. In the future, if we are lucky, other mainstream companies will adopt this view.

Software entrepreneurs constantly make the mistake to equate number of features in software with a better chance of dominance in the market. And, if one look at how the market works, there is some justification for this thinking: if a software has a large number of features, then it can attract a larger user base. And, of course, more users means more money. Having a big app, therefore, means that we can get more business streams from the same niche or from related user niches.

However, a factor that is often overlooked is that increasing the number of features in an application may also reduce maintainability. Which means that the company will necessarily take more time to react to changes in the market. Consider classic example of Netscape: they had a web browser with more features than any other, and exactly because of this they were not able to maintain their leadership in the browser arena.

Creating a Proper Foundation

The only way to avoid getting jammed in complexity is to create a strong framework in which to build an application. There are practical examples of systems that were able to grow from very small to very large in a short time thanks to the superiority of the underlying architecture. A case in point is the UNIX operating system, whose basic ideas allowed it to grow immensely without sacrificing the qualities of its core. On the other hand, the Windows OS, which lacks such a strong foundation, has not been so successful in maintaining quality.

A typical response from companies that need to cope with this phenomenon is to throw more developers at the problem. While more developers could give some contribution, it is really hard to fix fundamental problems with an architecture after it is in use for a long time. Also, more developers end up adding complexity to a system, and the end result can be even worse in terms of maintainability.

The Opportunity

While it is a sad thing that applications are generally so badly designed, this state of affairs also present great opportunities for new companies. The goal is to create software that can improve on the legacy system by providing a better foundation for extensibility. If you have a good design for a piece of existing software, that would make it much easier to write and extend. Such a framework can provide a technical advantage that would turn the table to your favor. The framework could be created and deployed in the following way:

• Create a small app that has the core functionality and is still attractive to a segment of users. It helps a lot if these users are not happy with the existing offers by big vendor. Make sure that your software present users with a good, extensible architecture. This is the factor that will make it easier to add more functionality later.
• Get even more users interested in your app by adding functionality beyond the core infrastructure.
• Avoid the costly mistake of adding too many features that would complicate your basic product.
• Once you get established, make sure you continue to maintain the basic framework. Remember, the core technology of your program is what will make it hard for your competitors to replicate what you did.