Measures matter: they change our focus and our behavior.

An overly simplistic or reductionist take — where leaders measure only one dimension — will break the system. And when things fail in complex systems, they often fail in messy, difficult, spectacular ways.

Workplace surveys or assessments aren’t enough; they don’t tell us how to improve.

A more holistic framework for productivity — one that reveals a fuller picture — must include several dimensions, including satisfaction and well-being, performance, activity, communication and collaboration, and efficiency and flow. It can be summarized by the acronym SPACE.

Satisfaction and well-being captures how fulfilled and happy people are with their work or the systems they use to do their work, and how that work affects them.

satisfaction and well-being are about how people and teams work together to create value. It’s also about how well we can work with our systems, in the context of technology.

Performance measures outcomes — how well a system or process performs — and includes metrics like quality, speed, and impact.

Activity measures a count of things that are done.

Communication and collaboration is about how people and teams work together, and it may be the most overlooked dimension in the framework.

Efficiency and flow capture progress in work; this can include measures of time or speed through a system, number of handoffs, interruptions, and one’s ability to stay “in the flow”.

people were working more as the pandemic went on.

development is about collaboration.

“high productivity is masking an exhausted workforce”. The report also noted that over 40% of the global workforce is considering leaving their employer this year.

Most of our measurement systems aren’t ready for complete telemetry, and some things are best measured by asking people, not the tooling — because only people can tell you what it’s like to build systems, and only people can reveal the blind spots in your systems.

Finding flow is key, and interruptions are a drag. Minimal or no interruptions give developers an 82% chance of having a good day, but interruptions throughout the day decrease the chance of a good day to just 7%.

Collaboration improves our work, but too many meetings can be a blocker; going from two to three meetings per day lowered the chances of making progress toward their goals by 60%.

A two-minute daily reflection can help improve your days. Developers reported that daily reflection was a great new habit, and seeing patterns gave them clear ideas for what to change in their days.