[integraton]

The sad part is that even after decades of technologists debating this, the reality is that most non-technologists working in the industry don't know, don't care, and really just want their pet features. The real measure of productivity in organizations with non-technical stakeholders therefore becomes whether or not a stakeholder feels like they are getting what they want. Attempts to measure productivity, whether via lines of code or "velocity," are often little more than a way for everyone to pretend their opinion is backed by something quantitative. In especially bad cases with non-technical management, they'll just keep swapping out processes until they either get what they want or have something with numbers and graphs that makes it look like they should.

While I could be accused of excessive cynicism, I do believe this is common enough that it should be addressed. There's a pervasive delusion that decisions are made by rational, informed actors, when that is rarely the case.

[lifeisstillgood]

> becomes whether or not a stakeholder feels like they are getting what they want.

If the stakeholder you choose is a customer, then that is a valid measure of business productivity.

Which I guess is kind of the point - we are trying to measure on a granularity beyond what we can validly do.

Which indicates to me that a world of smaller organisations, made up of software literate people will be one where rewards will follow talent. That may not be a world we want to live in - and my cynicism sees your cynicism and raises :-)

[sergioschuler]

Speaking for the non-technologists here: I used to measure productivity crosschecking what people accomplished in a certain time and what they said they would accomplish in that time. Well, it is not really productivity, but at least estimating the amount of stuff you can get done. So, it is more like goals of development.