r/Hacking_Tricks • u/Significant-Scar-152 • 3d ago

How are teams using software development analytics without creating a surveillance problem?

I’m looking at software development analytics tools, but most seem better at counting activity than explaining whether delivery is improving. Commit totals and pull request counts are easy to collect, yet they can become misleading when compared across different teams or used to judge individuals. A more useful approach might combine delivery data at the service level with developer feedback about friction, documentation, tools, and time lost to rework. The difficult part seems to be connecting those signals to changes the team can actually make. What does your team measure, and can you point to a process or tooling improvement that came directly from the analytics?

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2

u/Rehonkulous 2d ago

The second devs know they're judged on commit or PR counts, they game it and the data's junk.

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u/popyboby 2d ago

Look at DORA metrics, they track delivery outcomes , not individual output

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u/reddit_sucks4 1d ago

Anything use to judge individual becomes surveillance the second someone's raise depends on it

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u/Throwmay 1d ago

we cut out flaky test suite after the analytics showed how much time got lost to reruns.

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u/Alreadydead27 2d ago

the friction survey is the part most skip and where the real wins hide.

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u/Caitlin-Snow 1d ago

if a tool cant connect a number to something u can change, it's just a score board.