>Not really. How do you quantify tech debt? How do you quantify the tradeoffs that someone made to add new functionality?
Time is quantifiable and comparable. Time spent on making things happen and then dealing with the consequences. The percentage of people leaving the organization in their first year is quantifiable.
Tech debt and tradeoffs from the previous feature will show up either as time spent on adding the next one or time spent on fixing bugs. Estimating is difficult, but measuring and figuring out post factum what amount of time was spent on yak shaving isn't exactly impossible. It maybe be uncomfortable and self incriminating, but that's a culture problem.
alfalfasprout|11 months ago
This is always going to have a critical subjective element to it.
The moment you start treating engineers like factory floor workers, that's what you get.
Muromec|11 months ago
Time is quantifiable and comparable. Time spent on making things happen and then dealing with the consequences. The percentage of people leaving the organization in their first year is quantifiable.
Tech debt and tradeoffs from the previous feature will show up either as time spent on adding the next one or time spent on fixing bugs. Estimating is difficult, but measuring and figuring out post factum what amount of time was spent on yak shaving isn't exactly impossible. It maybe be uncomfortable and self incriminating, but that's a culture problem.