Ori Keren, co-founder and CEO of LinearB, has a wealth of experience in software engineering, having been programming since 1987 and previously serving as VP of R&D at CloudLock, which was later acquired by Cisco. Keren emphasizes the importance of stellar software engineering teams in the success of top tech organizations like Google, Slack, and Salesforce. However, many teams struggle to achieve elite performance due to a lack of visibility into workflow constraints and bottlenecks, as well as a lack of crucial context for improvement. To achieve high-quality software delivery at scale, benchmarking against other industry peers is essential.
A study conducted by LinearB in 2023 analyzed over 2,000 software engineering teams across 64 countries, tracking 100,000 developers and 3.7 million pull requests. Teams that integrated engineering benchmarks and visibility metrics into their programs experienced significant improvements in productivity. Pull request sizes decreased by 33.2%, cycle time improved by 47.27%, review time by 46.82%, and pickup time by 48.75%. These benchmarks provided teams with a clear direction to work, problem-solve, and build better.
To benchmark your engineering team’s performance effectively, LinearB suggests focusing on three key categories: efficiency metrics, DORA metrics, and quality and predictability metrics. Efficiency metrics include merge frequency, coding time, pull request pickup time, review time, and deployment time. DORA metrics look at cycle time, deployment frequency, change failure rate, and mean time to recovery, while quality and predictability metrics involve PR rework rate, refactor rate, planning accuracy, and capacity accuracy. Understanding these metrics in context with similar businesses in the industry is crucial for determining areas of improvement.
Engineering leaders face the challenge of delivering more features faster while balancing operational excellence and driving business value. Benchmarking your team’s performance against industry peers can provide valuable insights into areas for improvement and help you achieve your goals. By tracking key metrics and understanding how your team compares to others in the industry, you can make necessary adjustments to enhance performance. Benchmarking allows engineering teams to operate at peak efficiency and deliver the results needed for the business. Building software engineering intelligence as a capability within your organization is essential for long-term success.
The Forbes Technology Council, an invitation-only community for top CIOs, CTOs, and technology executives, emphasizes the importance of benchmarking in improving engineering team performance. Benchmarking provides the context needed to understand where your team stands within the industry and enables you to make informed decisions to drive success. By leveraging benchmarking data and metrics, engineering leaders can optimize their teams, deliver on business goals, and achieve elite performance in today’s competitive tech landscape.
