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◢◢ SPACE Framework

Developer productivity is complex and nuanced, with important implications for software development teams. A clear understanding of defining, measuring, and predicting developer productivity could provide organizations, managers, and developers with the ability to make higher-quality software—and make it more efficiently. — The SPACE of Developer Productivity

Why do we need a framework to measure our productivity and output?

Bringing structure to the conversation about engineer and team productivity will give us a fair and honest view of:

We will create better, more fruitful conversations—and, ultimately, more fruitful collaborative relationships—with leadership and other departments if we cultivate a system that shows our workings.

So much of engineering is teamwork. A structure which focuses relentlessly on removing blockers and removing friction from our team systems will serve as a potent “secret sauce” as we grow this team and this product.

Introducing a process around this soon will give us compounding results and allow us to build on it further over the coming years.

Extra Context on SPACE and it's origins at the bottom of this doc 👇

JASPACE v1

Here is our first iteration on how we use SPACE at Just About.

The goal with this first version is to be:

Satisfaction and well-being

I’ll ask each engineer to answer the following questions weekly in our 1:1. Answers should be gut feelings and given a score out of 5.

Performance

These performance metrics are team-based. There are a tonne of factors that feed into performance, so we'll focus on how we are performing as a team first.

Activity

Individual performance is still an important piece for us to look at together. I’ll ask each engineer to report on the following in our weekly 1:1:

Communication & Collaboration

I will ask each engineer to address the below questions in our weekly 1:1:

Efficiency and flow

In this area, I'd like us to focus on improving our general workflow practices, and understand how the engineers in the team want to pick up work.

I will ask each engineer to address the below question in our weekly 1:1:

Conclusion

Performance is the outcome of a system or process.

The performance of software developers is hard to quantify, because it can be difficult to tie individual contributions directly to product outcomes. We still must quantify it.

Thanks for participating!

Context on SPACE and its origins

The SPACE of Developer Productivity was Developed by Nicole Forsgren from GitHub, Margaret-Anne Storey from the University of Victoria, and Chandra Maddila, Thomas Zimmermann, Brian Houck, and Jenna Butler from Microsoft Research.

It provides a way to evaluate developer productivity as a function of Satisfaction and well-being; Performance; Activity; Communication and collaboration; and Efficiency and flow.

The goal of the SPACE framework is to assess productivity as the complex interplay of multiple factors rather than focusing on a specific metric (like lines of code committed, or pull requests, which reliably drives manipulative and myopic behaviour). This framework aims to reveal a nuanced landscape of what’s going well and what can be dialled in.

A Summary of the SPACE Framework

Satisfaction and well-being

Performance

Activity

Communication and collaboration

Efficiency and flow