Engineering enablement

Metrics

Wisdom from Abi Noda

Calculating engineering metrics perfectly is impossible. Take cycle time, for example:

• Calculating it from PR open to merge creates fuzziness based on when devs open PRs

• If you try to calculate from "first commit", Git rebases muddy your numbers

• Also: your metrics aren't factoring out non-working hours or weekends

• And some teams don't use PRs at all

It's fine to settle for "good enough".

All metrics are proxies.

It's the trends and comparisons that give you the most signal.