

Track Commits. Not Time. - ericclemmons
https://medium.com/what-i-learned-building/5d9e1d61d34f

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hedonist
No, man. It's certainly useful to _read_ a developer's commit history. But at
they end of the day they're just as silly and misleading as any other metric.

The only metric that matters is _business value_ generated. A really valuable
developer might be able to make important strategic contributions to a project
through just a handful of commits. While a particularly weak (or negative-
performing) committer might be making zillions of commits, but actually doing
irreparable damage to the project before anyone notices.

Those activity charts might make good eye candy, but if you don't know your
developers or understand their working styles, they just won't tell you that
much.

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ericclemmons
(OP here) Oh, I'm must have not been very clear on the purpose behind tracking
commits vs. time - for accounting purposes when recording what time gets
capitalized and what time gets expensed. As for misleading, when we matched up
commits to time spent per project, they lined up incredibly well, as mentioned
in the article.

You're correct that business value is a crucial metric, but that's applied
across departments and largely for strategic reasons. This is managed &
handled entirely separate from how developer time is translated into
accounting practices, which is what my post was about.

