(Virtual) Studying and Measuring Developer Productivity at Google

Abstract: Software engineers are a large cost to running a software company, and ensuring that they have the best possible tooling, processes, and frameworks is essential to their productivity. In this talk, I’ll describe how Google understands (and measures) developer productivity and how we approach improvements to our tooling. We utilize mixed-methods research to understand engineer’s day-to-day behavior, the context they are working in, and how they make decisions (independently and as a group). I’ll provide our framework for thinking about developer productivity and how we identify pain points, and I’ll also describe some major open research problems that we’d love to see people study further!

Bio: Ciera Jaspan is the tech lead manager of the Engineering Productivity Research within Developer Infrastructure. The Engineering Productivity Research team brings a data-driven approach to business decisions around engineering productivity. They use a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods to triangulate on measuring productivity. She currently co-authors an IEEE Software column titled “Productivity for Humans”. She received her B.S. in Software Engineering from Cal Poly and her Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon.

Zoom link: https://uci.zoom.us/j/94056994344?pwd=4p8V9uraBVNzdJFQR7LXGPxAa1NIRc.1