I had dinner with Johanna Rothman, here in Seattle, on Monday evening. We got to talking about the problem of individually measuring developers. She sees this often with her clients. It typically comes just after the organization is beginning to stabilize. It is possible to measure velocity, to estimate capacity and to stem off the input to a rate which can be processed by the current team. Now that it is possible to measure, the boss turns his thoughts to how it might be possible to increase the productivity.

All managers know that software development productivity is closely related to the ability of the individual. We've all known this since the early 70's. And we also know that the productivity differences can be huge. Sackman reported this in the late 60's. So managers start to think about how to identify the weaker links and hopefully eliminate them.

THIS IS SO WRONG!

You simply cannot measure developers individually. Why not?

Software development is a knowledge work business. Knowledge is about information. The more knowledge and information available about the problem domain then the better off we all are. When you start to measure developers individually, you incentivize those developers to hoard information for themselves. Why share when you will get rewarded for keeping it to yourself? Why share when doing so allows your colleagues to go faster? Whether it is information about use of a language, or skill in UML, or knowledge of unit testing techniques, or domain subject matter knowledge, or just plain use of the IDE, it is all useful knowledge that can help a team go faster. Knowledge sharing is a key to success. To elevate the system of software engineering, you need to encourage more, not less knowledge sharing.

Individual measurement is anti-team working. Groups of individuals typically perform poorly compared to a good integrated team.

Individual measurement is also demotivational. We live in a world where geeks grow up to be conspiracy theorists. For their protection, their government spies on them in many forms, commercial companies spy on them particularly on the web. Their privacy is invaded day and daily. The unlucky ones may even have a spouse or children or parents who spy on them. The last thing they need at work is a boss who also spies on them and punishes them for under achievement - however that is defined. Knowledge worker productivity is directly related to motivation. If the developer is a little coding machine, then that machine works harder when pumped with the right motivation.

Individual measurement is demotivational. Poorly motivated developers under perform. Good leaders motivate! Bad ones don't! Managers who measure individuals aren't good leaders.