Engineering Metrics
ELI5 — The Vibe Check
Engineering metrics measure how well your development process works. How often do you deploy? How long do PRs take to merge? How many bugs escape to production? They're the vital signs of your engineering organization — necessary but dangerous if used as targets.
Real Talk
Quantitative measures of software development effectiveness and efficiency. Common metrics include deployment frequency, lead time for changes, change failure rate, mean time to recovery (DORA metrics), cycle time, PR review time, build time, and defect density. Effective metric programs focus on outcomes rather than outputs.
When You'll Hear This
"We track DORA metrics to measure engineering health, not individual developer productivity." / "Be careful with engineering metrics — Goodhart's Law turns them into targets instead of measurements."
Related Terms
Agile
Agile is a philosophy of building software in short cycles, learning from real feedback, and adapting quickly instead of following a massive upfront plan.
Developer Experience
Developer Experience is everything about how pleasant or miserable it is to work with a piece of software as a developer.
DORA Metrics
DORA Metrics are four numbers that measure how well your team delivers software: how often you deploy, how fast code goes from commit to production, how of...
Goodhart's Law
Goodhart's Law: 'When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.' Measure lines of code? People write verbose code.