Chapter 3. The Right Data
The big challenge is to measure the right things.
—Michael Lewis, from his article “The No-Stats All-Star”
Before you have metrics, you need data. For “good” metrics, you need the “right” data. This chapter will help you choose the data you want to collect and use to improve the performance of your software team and the people in it. I’ll start by helping you decide what questions you want to ask, which in turn will help you determine the data you need to collect.
The first section of this chapter covers key questions that you might ask about coders, software teams, and software projects or releases. These are the questions that you would want metrics to help you answer. The second section of this chapter dives into the data sources and data elements that can be used to create metrics that will, at least in part, answer the key questions. All of this is to lay the groundwork for the specific metrics that will be covered in detail in the coming chapters.
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