4 Software Development KPIs for Seamless Software Development Process

To ensure a seamless software development process and successful execution, it’s essential to know if your team is on the right track and the software development is going in the right direction. Hence, you need software development KPIs to get a high-quality product as well as a productive team that doesn’t skip deadlines.

A Key Performance Indicator (KPI) is used to demonstrate the effectiveness of a certain project, team, or developer, in achieving certain business goals and monitor achievements and failures at different times. 

However, KPI software development is used in important business processes to evaluate the software development most accurately. In this article, we’ll cover the most important KPI for software development to help you stay accountable to the goals you or your company set.

What is KPI Software Development?

KPI for software development helps you measure success in a certain activity or in achieving certain goals. A good KPI must be SMART. It means that a metric should:

• S – Have a ‘Specific Purpose’ concerning software development.
• M –  Be ‘Measurable’ to be easily evaluated and compared with other indicators at different times.
• A – Be ‘Attainable and Actionable’ both for a team or end-users.
• R – Denote the ‘Relevance’ of a certain software development company.
• T – Have a ‘Time limit’ and represent a value over a given period.

How Important is Software Development KPIs?

Using the right KPI for software development is extremely important because they bring certain benefits to your project which are – 

• They result in Increased ROI.
• KPIs ensure that your team acts as one unit and optimizes working processes effectively.
• Software development KPIs outline a clear picture of business perspectives.
• You can analyze and determine the weak sides of the devs and fix them.
• They help ensure that the project is implemented on time and within budget.
• The KPIs enhance brand loyalty and retain existing clients.

4 Essentials KPIs for Software Development

There are different software development KPIs that reveal various aspects of the development process. Here in this blog, we will focus only on the main Agile metrics that make an impact –

1. Velocity

Velocity indicates the amount of work that your team can accomplish in a given amount of time, which is called a ‘sprint’.

This software development KPI is great for forecasting as you can easily predict the number of iterations a new project may require and accordingly plan future sprints. 

How To Measure It?

With each sprint, you can estimate the amount of work and the average speed within which it should be completed. 

For example, if your team completed –

• 40 story points in your first sprint
• 50 story points in the second sprint, 
• 50 story points in the third sprint, and 
• 60 story points in the fourth sprint. 

Then, the average velocity would be ‘50 story points in one sprint’. Additionally, the team productivity will be directly proportional to velocity. If velocity is high, team productivity will be high too. However, at the same time, don’t focus only on velocity, also consider the high-quality performance of the team.

Using this simple rule, you can accurately predict how your team will complete the project. 

2. Sprint Burndown

This metric, you can evaluate the amount of time remaining to complete pre-planned tasks. It helps you manage your progress and stay on track!

If at any point, you think that your team won’t be able to achieve its goal, you can plan certain adjustments and keep the team informed of certain hurdles that may arise to ensure on-time delivery.

How To Measure It?

You can use a special chart with X and Y axes to visualize the workflow. X would be the vertical axis representing the story points and Y would be the horizontal one representing the time.

Create a dotted line in the chart to show the amount of work remaining in the sprint, and the blue line represents the actual state of the workflow. If the dotted line goes below the blue line, the team is doing a great job. If it’s above, it means the project is running behind the schedule and requires adjustments.

3. Cycle Time

This KPI for software development shows how much time a team spends working on a specific task. You can assess the effectiveness of the development and predict how quickly you can provide new features to customers.

How to measure it?

Use this formula to calculate the cycle time –

α – β ( where α = end date of a cycle; β = the start date)

For a better understanding, create a chart, where you can indicate the time spent on tasks. A shorter cycle time means the team is working fine whereas a longer cycle time indicates potential problems in your team’s process.

4. Release Burndown

Using this metric, you can know if the team can release the product by a certain date or not. If not, you can inform users and stakeholders of the delay or reduce the amount of work to ensure timely delivery.

How To Measure It?

Use a release burndown chart to monitor your team’s progress and stay on track during every sprint. Use two axes each for showing the sprint and the story points to analyze and do the required changes.

For detailed information on KPI software development, connect with our team of experts today.