James Shore: The Best Product Engineering Org in the World
It was September 2023, my CEO was asking me a question, and my position as Vice President of Engineering was less than three months old.
It was September 2023, my CEO was asking me a question, my position was less than three months old, and I didn’t have an answer.
It’s true! The question of measuring productivity is a famous one, and the best minds in the industry have concluded it can’t be done. Martin Fowler wrote an article in 2003 titled “Cannot Measure Productivity.” Kent Beck and Gergely Orosz revisited the question 20 years later. Kent Beck concluded, “Measure developer productivity? Not possible.”
My favorite discussion of the topic is Robert Austin’s, who wrote Measuring and Managing Performance in Organizations. He says a measurement based approach “generates relatively weak improvements“ and “significant distortion of incentives.”
But this isn’t a talk about measuring productivity. This is a talk about what you do, as VP of Engineering, when somebody asks for the impossible.
