What are quality metrics?

These metrics assess various attributes, such as:

• Code quality
• Functionality
• User experience
• System performance

By quantifying these aspects, quality metrics help ensure that software meets customer expectations and aligns with business objectives. They also provide teams with actionable insights to maintain and improve software quality throughout its lifecycle.

Quality metrics in software development are crucial for delivering reliable and high-performing applications. They perform several useful functions:

These metrics help teams identify defects early in the development cycle to reduce rework and associated costs. Managers may notice specific errors or habits among developers who require targeted guidance, or a team may recognize the need to review their coding standards. 

Teams can use objective data to track progress, improve processes, and ensure alignment with quality standards and customer expectations. Such data reduces the chance of friction between managers and employees during performance reviews and assessments.

Team members understand success criteria and areas for improvement because the signals provide clearly defined targets. Individuals can also review their metrics to set personal goals and enjoy easy performance reviews.

By consistently measuring quality, organizations can enhance software usability, boost customer satisfaction, and maintain a competitive edge in the market.

In software development, quality metrics can be classified into product metrics, process metrics, and project metrics.

Evaluate the quality of the software itself. Examples include:

• Defect density: Number of defects per lines of code.   
• Code coverage: Percentage of code executed by unit tests.   
• Response time: Time taken for the software to respond to a user's request.   
• Usability: How easy the software is to use.

Focus on the efficiency and effectiveness of development workflows. Metrics include:

• Defect removal efficiency: Percentage of defects detected and fixed before reaching production.   
• Cycle time: Time taken to complete a task or activity in the development process.   
• Change failure rate: Percentage of changes that introduce new defects.

Assess aspects of project management through metrics such as:

• Schedule variance: Difference between planned and actual completion dates.   
• Cost variance: Difference between planned and actual project costs.   
• Customer satisfaction: How satisfied the customer is with the final product.

Together, these metrics provide a holistic view of software quality that guides improvements across all stages of development.

Enji works in the background to observe, collect, and analyze code-related data produced by individual developers and engineering teams. Two features in particular aim to assess the quality of code within a project: Team and individual code metrics.

Enji gathers data from tasks, comments, stand-ups, and worklogs to provide objective data that reflects the current state of projects and pull/merge requests. This data allows leaders to identify roadblocks to producing quality code.

Each developer contributes to the quality of a team's code, and Enji helps managers support responsible and proper coding habits through transparent data. See the progress of individual engineers to understand how well they cope with tasks and direct assistance where needed.

Enji guides tech leaders to the areas that require improvement without distracting engineering teams and individual developers from important work.