[xhrpost]

I think the metrics idea for developing may have value, but I also feel you could start to answer some of these questions simply by asking the developers. We tend to know if we're all of a sudden spending our time just on bug fixing. Or if a project keeps going back and forth between development and QA or management. We can often tell when something isn't efficient. At that point, it comes down to making some tough and potentially uncomfortable decisions to change the process across the team as necessary. This change is often difficult to make happen. Perhaps metrics will help convince non-developers to get on board?

[epetre]

You are absolutely right, managers could ask developers for those metrics. It's actually how it's it's done right now, in my experience.

The value I see for developers is to get some objective metrics on a feeling they have. If they think something is inefficient, they should be able to be able experiment with their process. But that needs to be done a bit more objectively.

I think developers could also use this as proof that that the problem is not always with the team but sometimes it may come from management.

The scope creep is a good example of this. A manager keeps adding stuff to the current iteration and the dev team gets swamped. A widget could clearly show the impact of that scope variation.

I see value for the dev team, end-users and management if it's done right.