Key Performance Indicators (KPI) for Software Development

Posted by mkhairul - April 24, 2008 at 08:04:31 pm -

Categories: blog

Back in the early days, I was in the software development team for an enterprise HRMS (Human Resource Management System) software and one of the features that was missing at that time were KPIs and scorecards. I have no interest whatsoever in any of these Human Resource skills which the company can train me on (which was also my loss for not taking the opportunity to learn). I only did what I do because the problems that arises were interesting. Errors, crashes, non-trivial features or requirements servers, and the most important thing is the development process, thats my main interest.

There was a time when I was needed to implement these scorecard and KPI features into the system. A visit from a consultant is arranged. So there I am, listening to a consultant which deserve every bit of respect I can give, after all he was a Human Resource Manager for Maybank, trying his best describing KPIs and scorecards to me. The voice was a little bit slow, or just maybe my mind wanders off on its own, thinking, what the hell is he trying to tell me. The rest of it.. is uh.. well, I can’t remember much of it. But what I do know that, the emphasize on the words "Scorecard" and "KPI" by my boss (at that time) tells me that it is VERY important. To make a long story short, all the new feature doesn’t meet the light of day because the bugs swarmed the development staff like red ants over meat.

Here, now, in the present. I’m confronted with these KPI thing again. I cannot run this time, I have to face these KPI thing and deal with it. And deal with it I did. Now, information is at your fingertips, anything you need to know, you just have to craft the questions to it. The broader the question the less accurate the answers will be. The question is already half of the answer. If you don’t know what you’re finding, how will you be able to find it?

An old saying goes, "A wise man’s question contains half the answer."

In being able to carefully craft my question (keywords) I found the answer I long sought (searched for 10 minutes). An explanation for KPI (one which I could understand)!

Martin Luther King, Jr. had a morally compelling vision: multiracial peace. Your business needs a morally compelling vision, too, if you want to hire the best and retain them. King had a strategy to achieve his vision: nonviolent protest. If he’d had a KPI (and maybe he did), it might have been something like "number of violent incidents per protester," and he would push his organization to reduce that metric over time.

- Key Performance Indicators for Consultancies

This example is just nice. As a bonus, I found a collection of KPI for various industries (including INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY) from KPI Library. Nice.

So after understanding the article, I suggested a few KPIs:

1. No. of Estimation on Target
2. Average Time Response for Bugs/Requests
3. …many more.

These key points are not just numbers, high or low, for indicating the team’s performance. They have different meanings to it. Those who judge the numbers without inquire the meaning behind it is a fool. Software development is a creative process, sometime there’s just lots of easy tasks and sometime few incredibly hard tasks, in a corporate environment, we as a member of an organization will always be bothered with other task which will sometimes overrule other priorities at hand. Its unavoidable.

Alright, enough with this KPI thing. As Jonathan Coulton would say, "Look at me still talking when there’s science to do" (Portal Ending Song, Still Alive).

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