Invest in managing software engineering efficiency, not only measuring individuals' performances. SDLC: A Complex Black Box The software development life cycle is . There are two main reasons: a complex black box Sofware development is . Humans produce software, not machines. Reason-1: craftsmanship Software development is . There are complex processes in the background we cannot understand and measure. Reason-2: a deep cognitive activity How To See The Problems? The main problem in this complex black box is " the problems": not seeing Where do I have bottlenecks? What to improve? Where is the problem? Every problem produces its own symptom. We need to hear the symptoms of the software development processes to see the problems. The symptoms lead us to the problems. The Symptoms Of The Software Development The question is: "What are the symptoms of a software development cycle?" Another question that guides you to find the answer is: "What affects the efficiency of my development teams?" There is a small list of answers, you can also add yours to the list: That's all about the systems, individuals, and teams, not only the system-level, team-level, or individual-level. Complexity, overload, workload, bottlenecks, technical debt, rework, burnout, unhappiness, blockages... But I wonder about that how many of them do you track? You may feel the need to improve something unclear. Do you really hear these symptoms with real-time data in your development cycle? Or do we all are just ? flying blind How To Build Healthy Software Development Teams? The software development life cycle is a complex black box, . When you ask a doctor about your symptom ( , ), the should find the main problem of your body. Therefore, the specialist doctor requires your story, blood test, and/or medical imaging to diagnose first and then to treat the disease. just like the human body e.g. stomachache specialist "Companies are only as healthy as the teams that compose them." (State of Teams Report 2021, Atlassian) Engineering Leaders vs. Specialists Doctors Engineering Team Leads are the specialists of their teams. They are capable of interpreting and understanding the symptoms of their teams. They can pinpoint the main problems that systems, individuals, and teams have in the software development life cycle. The Key To Healthy Teams: Engineering Efficiency managing , not only measuring individuals' performances. Invest in software engineering efficiency Do not look for ways of measuring developer performance. Try to find a way to improve engineering efficiency. Consider employing an engineering efficiency platform. Integrate it with your SDLC tools ( ) and get complete visibility of your development cycle. Then, Engineering Leaders - - will easily start monitoring, identifying, and improving with the hidden power of engineering efficiency platforms. e.g., GitHub, GitLab, AzureDevOps, Bitbucket, Jira, Jenkins, Sonarqube, NewRelic, etc. as the specialist doctors their team's health and performance together
