Insights and metrics to measure developers’ productivity in the Salesforce ecosystem
Data-driven people management is the process of using data to make better decisions about everything from recruiting to performance management to career development.
By collecting and analysing data, companies can better understand their workforce productivity and identify areas to improve.
Leveraging data-driven approaches can significantly enhance productivity and performance within Salesforce engineering teams, where innovation and efficiency are paramount.
Salesforce developers are tasked with creating solutions that drive business success, making it crucial to harness data for informed decision-making at every stage of the development lifecycle.
Developers productivity
Productivity is just how well any team member works—an inherently human, subjective thing. How could data and metrics capture what makes someone a special team member?
How can data be useful?
As part of a thoughtful, ongoing feedback strategy, data and analytics help managers understand and bring out the best in their people.
In the Salesforce ecosystem, developer productivity encompasses coding output and the ability to create robust solutions aligned with business objectives. While productivity is subjective, data and metrics play a vital role in quantifying and optimising it.
Which metrics are relevant?
In recent years, extensive research has been conducted around developer productivity, driven by researchers at GitHub, the University of Victoria, and Microsoft.
The main outcome of such research is the SPACE framework. SPACE is an acronym summarising the key dimensions of developers' productivity: satisfaction, performance, activity, communication, and efficiency. Interestingly enough, researchers only advocate for using some of the metrics at a time rather to carefully select a reduced set of metrics that spans over teams and individuals.
Custom Insights for Salesforce Engineering Teams
- Metrics Alignment: Tailor metrics to align with Salesforce development processes, emphasising factors such as code commits, pull requests, and Salesforce-specific activities like customisations and configurations.
- Performance Correlation: Correlate individual contributions with Salesforce product outcomes, focusing on metrics like code quality, successful deployments, and customer satisfaction with implemented solutions.
For Salesforce engineering teams, the selection of metrics must reflect the unique aspects of Salesforce development methodologies and best practices.
Custom Metrics for Salesforce Development
- Configuration Changes: Track the frequency and impact of configuration changes within Salesforce Orgs, such as modifications to workflows, validation rules, and custom objects.
- Apex Code Coverage: Monitor Apex code coverage metrics to ensure comprehensive testing and adherence to Salesforce platform limits, enhancing overall solution quality and reliability.
Leveraging Clayton for Salesforce Teams
Clayton can be customised for Salesforce engineering teams, and offers invaluable insights into developer performance and activity within the Salesforce ecosystem.
Custom Features for Salesforce Teams:
- Salesforce-Specific Visualizations: Integrate Salesforce-specific visualisations into Clayton's dashboard, showcasing key Salesforce metrics like Apex code coverage trends and configuration change impact analysis.
- Org-Level Salesforce Insights: Provide organization-level insights tailored to Salesforce development projects, allowing teams to identify top performers and areas for optimisation within the context of Salesforce solutions.
Which metrics can Clayton provide?
Clayton can provide some interesting data, specifically about the dimensions of developers' performance and activity. The following table summarises what Clayton can collect for each developer every time it performs a code scan:
Clayton offers this data in a " People " dashboard under the “Insights” menu. The “People” dashboard offers two main levels of detail: the whole organisation and the individual contributor.
Organisation level
At the organisation level, Clayton offers a visualisation of all team members distributed across the two axes of ACTIVITY and PERFORMANCE:
The chart above allows to easily compare individuals, not for the sake of comparison but because does not exist an absolute measure of productivity therefore we consider smarter to have a relative measure of individuals that are working in the same organisation to the same projects. The chart aims to highlight who are top performers that need more challenges and those individuals that need more proactive training.
Individual level
At the individual level, Clayton offers a drill-down view that gives an immediate overview of the progress made by the developer over time. An heat map showing developer activity ( commits and pull-requests ) over the months highlighting in brighter red or green the days with more activity and leaked issues ( in case of red ) or without issues ( in case of green ).
A part of the heat map, the individual contributor page, offers suggestions for training with a curated list of resources and other visualisations that give more insights around the leaked issues.
How can you use Clayton's insights in your team?
Strategic integration into people management practices is essential to maximise the impact of Clayton's insights within Salesforce engineering teams. Here are some ways you can use Clayton's data:
- Salesforce Performance Reviews: use Clayton's metrics on performance and activity to provide objective data during performance reviews. This can help you have more meaningful discussions with your team members and provide targeted feedback for improvement.
- Salesforce Career Development: Identify Salesforce-specific skill gaps and opportunities for growth using Clayton's data, guiding tailored training and development initiatives for Salesforce developers.
- Salesforce Team Optimisation: Utilise Clayton's organization-level visualisations to optimise Salesforce team performance, ensuring balanced workloads and fostering collaboration on Salesforce projects.
In the dynamic landscape of Salesforce engineering, data-driven people management practices empowered by Clayton's tailored insights enable Salesforce teams to thrive. By leveraging Salesforce-specific metrics and custom features, sales engineering leaders can elevate developer productivity, drive innovation, and deliver exceptional solutions that propel sales success.
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