Actionable insight for B2B SaaS Founders

Micro Blog: Metric Series Week 1

Written by Adam Wells | Jun 24, 2019 6:45:00 PM

 

Today, Adam Wells with GSTVC shares with us how he and the GST team value data driven decision-making.

Metric of the Week: Productivity (R&D)

This week we’re still on the Productivity train discussing your R&D group.  For you B2B SaaS companies, a significant portion of your expenses (COGS) is dedicated to R&D labor.  With such a large amount of money (and time) spent, a small adjustment will have big impact.  Leveraging management systems will allow you to gain insights into your team’s productivity beyond the previously mentioned planning, execution, timing and quality.  

By bringing all development activity into your time tracking system (Harvest, e.g.) and integrating this with your code repository (Github, e.g.) you’re able to have your finger on the pulse of your development activity.  

Along with leveraging your project management/fulfillment system (Jira, e.g.), one of the primary metrics to review will be #LOC/day per developer.  While there are many development tasks that will influence this number, consolidated industry standard is 75 LOC/day when the following tasks are mixed in: New Features, Defect Resolution & Code Refinement.  

 

How does your R&D group compare with the industry standard?