Sensible benchmarks for evaluating the effectiveness of your engineering organization

Navigating engineering metrics can be challenging, especially for those new to them, as it's tempting to measure success by comparing with other companies through benchmarks. However, the key to effective benchmarking lies in focusing on continuous improvement using a company's own baseline rather than trying to emulate others. To aid in this, a set of core engineering effectiveness metrics has been established, including engineering investment, flow efficiency, batch size, change lead time, and time to deploy. These metrics are selected for their fundamental nature, ease of measurement with modern tools, and their potential to drive significant improvements when optimized. The benchmarks are derived from extensive data across various companies and are intended as rule-of-thumb estimates that may require adaptation to specific organizational contexts. Swarmia, a tool mentioned in the context, helps teams identify bottlenecks and set realistic improvement goals by providing insights into these metrics. Achieving improvement is structured around three levels of attainment—Great, Good, and Needs Attention—each guiding where to focus efforts for maximum impact. Continuous integration/deployment practices, managing tech debt, and improving flow efficiency are among the recommended strategies for enhancing these metrics, with an understanding that improvements need to consider both technical and cultural factors within the engineering team.